The Twelve Days of Gundam Christmas
by Bored.To.Tears
Summary: What happens when you give all of the boys a vacation when none of them but Duo actually know what the vacation is for? 4 Chrismasly retarded pilots, 1 annoyed Duo, and a few odd situations. This is a story that reveals the true meaning of Christmas!
1. Explosives and a Palm Tree

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing.

**Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you. Oh and another thing. I am NOT on drugs. Thank you.

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

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_'On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me_

_Explosives and a Palm Tree.'_

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**Christmas Spirit**

"Heero, stop it!" Duo shouted up at Heero, who was currently on the roof of the safe house that all five gundam pilots had been forced to reside in. They had been there together for a total of three miserable days because the Docters had told them to take the Christmas season off to relax and try and enjoy the company of their fellow freedom fighters. But 'relaxing' wasn't exactly the word that any of the five pilots would have used to describe the experience.

At the beginning, the five were completely tense around one another and not really sure what to make of the others. Sure they had seen each other in passing on missions, but had never really gotten the chance to talk and get to know each another. After the tension came the careful greeting. Then they relaxed for a total of four seconds before the Gundam pilots started to work each other's every nerve.

The least happy of the house at the moment was probably Duo, who was currently standing in about 3 inches of snow, in the middle of the woods with his arms wrapped tightly around his lithe frame. He was shivering like mad because the white outfit he had borrowed from Wufei after his clothes became wet, did very little to keep out the cold that was seeping into his skin.

Heero, working on a few wires with his usual tunnel vision, paid little mind to what Duo was yelling and determinedly continued to fix a bomb around the chimney of the house.

"Heero! I was just joking! You can come down now! Santa can't really get into the house! It's just presents anyway! It's not like him and his little elves work for OZ!" Duo yelled, trying once more to coax the stubborn gundam pilot down off the roof.

Heero just huffed stubbornly and continued his work, down below Duo could be heard yelling loudly in anger before crunching through the snow to get back into the warmth of the house where he should have stayed. Lastly, Heero heard Duo shout, "Fine! Don't expect a present from me!" before Duo stomped into the house.

Heero mentally shrugged. 02 would get over it. It wasn't worth risking the security of the safe house. And if pilot 02 had been telling the truth, it was next to impossible keep Klaus out. Heero scowled down at his work as he wired one of the explosives, 02's feelings about his actions were most certainly not worth jeopardizing safety over.

Back in the cabin, Duo fell down on the couch in front of the roaring fire and sighed loudly, causing Wufei to look up from the book he was reading on Philosophy in the chair next to the couch.

"Yes Maxwell? Something bothering you?" Wufei asked with a slightly concerned but aggitated look, putting his finger in the book to mark his page and resting the book in his lap.

Duo groaned loudly and let his arm fall off the side of the couch. "No. I'm fine." He sighed dramatically.

After hearing the response, Wufei began to raise his book only to have his action cut off by the braided pilot, who decided to continue his statement. "Except for the fact that Heero is trying make Santa explode! I'm freezing! Stuck in this house. And hungry. But that last one is not really as important as the other three."

Wufei opened his mouth to make a reply to Duo's statement but was once again interrupted as Quatre came out of the small kitchen and into the living room with a loud sigh over Duo's complaints. "I told you not to go outside and disturb Heero. Plus, you have no one to blame but yourself for how cold you are after I told you to wear something water proof when going to set up a perimeter." Quatre said, shaking his head at Duo's actions but still shooting him a sypathetic look.

"So? That doesn't mean that it's any less true that Heero's insane." Duo responded, lifting his head up to look at Quatre and shoot a longing glance at one of the two mugs of hot chocolate that Quatre was holding.

Quatre laughed to himself, seeing the direction of Duo's look and he walked over to the couch to hand Duo one of the mugs and placed the other on the side table next to Wufei's chair. Wufei muttered his thanks without looking up from his book and Quate gave a small smile in response, before going to sit in one of the room's chairs to watch the fire crackle and pop.The room settled into a companionable silence, each of the boys lost in their own seperate worlds and enjoying what seemed like the first calm since they got there.

Duo stared up at the ceiling, currently lost in old memories of previous Christmas's. He remembered how on the streets they would all settle to begging, because people seemed to be extra giving around the holidays and they were all able to buy small presants for each other; he remembered how Sister Helen would always force them out into the snow to sing carols for people; he remembered how every single year he had gotten coal for Christmas. Dou frowned slightly at that last memory. He never had figured out why he had always gotten coal from Santa. As a child he had thought it was kinda' cool, like a pet rock (infact he still had his pet 'Rocky', who was safely in his pocket), but as he got older he started to get somewhat indignant of the fact that Klaus had deemed him 'not good enough' to recieve a gift. With a huff Duo decided to cast away that line of thought, and absentmindedly took one long drink from the mug.

A few moments after his long gulp from the cup, Dou's eyes widened and he let out a loud yelp of pain. He held his cup out to the side while fanning his tongue with wild, sparatic motions. "Oww! Mye ongue ith urning! Aye!"

Quatre looked over at him with a sympathetic look and said, "I was going to tell you to be careful with the hot chocolate, but it seems that you've already discovered that."

"No thit Therlock!" Duo said, still fanning his burnt tongue. Wufei looked up briefly from his book to cast Duo a disdainful look, wondering how someone like Duo could ever manage to become a gundam pilot. He seemed like such a five-year-old sometimes. With a sigh of acceptance, Wufei returned his attention back down to his book.

"I'm sorry Duo. Next time I won't be so quick to assume that you know that _hot_ chocolate is indeed hot." Quatre said with a slight chuckle and grin.

Duo laughed and finally pulled his tongue back in his mouth. Who knew anyone else in this house could crack a joke? "Nah. It's cool. I've had worse than a burnt tongue."

Quatre smiled and took the seat across from the couch. "Now would you mind telling me exactly what it was that you said to get Heero up on the roof?"

To this question Duo just began to laugh even harder, "I told him about Old Saint Nick."

His response seemed to only confuse Quatre as he tilted his head to the side and shot Duo a perplexed look. "Who?" he asked, not understanding why a person with the word 'Saint' in their title would have any motivation to try and break into their safe house through the fireplace as Heero seemed convinced they were.

"Am I really the only one here who knows who Santa is?" Duo asked with a disbelieving look on his face, wondering how anyone could live without the legend of Santa Klaus. How could these guys be freedom fighters without such basic knowledge? Back on L2, even the youngest kid knew who Santa was. Duo gave a mental shrug. These people were probably just slow for gundam pilots and he was just going to have to tolerate them. But it was turning out to be a lot like babysitting, in his opinion.

"Wait, who is Santa? I thought it was Saint Nick?" Quatre replied, looking more confused then ever.

Duo sighed and resigned himself to a long, tiring vacation in this place. "Santa is Saint Nick. He also is called Kris Kringle, Jolly Old Elf, and Father Christmas. Santa is one of the many reasons on L2 as a kid that I would dream of getting to Earth. Santa is a big, jolly, old fat guy in red that flies around in his magic sleigh, pulled by nine flying reindeer. He goes around the Earth giving presents to all the good children and coal to the bad ones. After getting into the house through the chimney, he leaves stuff below a Christmas tree - which I'm appalled that this place has none – and possibly in stockings. The toys are made by tons of elves. Any questions?" Duo explained with a bored look, as if he were explaining this to a four year old.

"How does he know who is good or bad?"

"Spying elves."

"How does he know what most children want?"

"They write him lists."

"How do the reindeer fly?"

"Christmas spirit."

"How does Saint Nick get down the chimney?"

"Thinks thin."

"Why so many names?"

"Why so many questions?" Duo shot back with his bored look getting worse by the moment. He still didn't understand why he was the only one who didn't know about Santa and while he did find it amusing that the others were so clueless, he didn't really get a whole lot of entertainment from answering questions that in his mind seemed infantile. On normal occasions he wouldn't have been so short with others, especially Quatre whom he had deemed an alright guy, but being locked in a house for an undisclosed amount of time with four other very different guys had left his patience a little low.

Quatre sat there with a hurt look on his face and fished for a reply. His mouth was open as he struggled for something to say. Back with the Maganacs he would have never gotten a reply like that. He wished deeply that Rashid was there. The other pilots were nice and all, they just weren't tolerable after so much exposure to each of their unique quirks. Heero liked rigging their house with explosives, Duo was a bit too sarcastic and needed to be entertained constantly, Trowa was kind yet somewhat curt and reclusive, and Wufei was just an honor spaz. They could get very tiring after a while and didn't seem to possess the basic knowledge of how to be civil for over an hour.

"He has so many names because of all the cultures that have named him."

Quatre whipped his head around and realized that the answer to his previous question had come from Trowa, who had quietly slipped into the room without anyone noticing. No matter what, it seemed that the only person in the house that was ever able to hear his footsteps was Duo. Even Wufei had jumped a bit in surprise at hearing Trowa's voice.

After the initial shock wore off, Quatre smiled thankfully at Trowa for answering his question.

Duo could be heard sighing in relief from his place on the couch. "Finally someone normal here. I thought I was the only one!"

Trowa smiled slightly but Wufei did not seem as amused. Wufei once again used his finger to mark his page in the book and looked over at Duo. "If by normal, you mean strange people with even stranger notions of happy, fat men traveling around the world with flying deer, then sure, let's call you normal." He said, sarcasm dripping from his voice

Duo shot an angry glare over at Wufei. If looks could kill Wufei would be six feet under by this point. "You wanna' say that to my face justice obsessed, Asian?" Duo huffed, placing his hot chocolate on the hardwood floor.

With an annoyed sigh, Wufei stood and placed his book in the chair, crossing the room to stand in front of Duo. He leaned over so he was nose to nose with Duo and said in a mock pleasant voice, "In case all that hair of yours muffles your hearing, I shall repeat myself. I said, 'if by normal, you mean strange people with even stranger notions of happy, fat men flying around the world, then sure, let's call you normal.' You hear me clearly enough that time Maxwell?" Seeing Duo's expression grow darker, Wufei smirked. He knew he was testing fate, but after spending three days stuck in this house, being annoyed by the other pilots, he seemed to derive an unreasonable amount of enjoyment from annoying them at any chance he was given. Maxwell in particular.

Duo stuck his tongue out at Wufei and just as Wufei was about to threaten something along the lines of cutting it of...

_BOOM!_

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

_Crunch._

Forgetting all their annoyances with one another, all four pilots rushed to the safe house front door while each reaching for a gun.

Quatre, who was the first to get outside, couldn't help but start snickering at the sight that lay out in front of him.

Outside in the snow, lay a very burnt and unhappy looking Heero, who was crouching on one knee and rubbing his head, glancing up at the roof and mumbling obscenities in Japanese. Even funnier was the roof, where about 20 shingles were scattered about and the bricks on the chimney were charred a dark brown.

Standing on his tip toes, Duo arched his neck to look over Quatre's shoulder, where he promptly blurted out, "Told ya' so!" to the annoyed Heero.

Heero just growled in response and got to his feet, looking up in aggravation at the roof.

"Might I ask what has happened here?" Trowa asked Heero while stepping around both Quatre and Duo to walk out into the snow so he could assess the damage done to the roof. For some reason, so far, when ever anything got broken (which had happened a surprising amount of times considering they had only lived in the house for three days), he always seemed to be the one called in to fix it. He felt like a maid cleaning up after a bunch of children. And in this particular case, a bunch of children with explosives.

Heero, not even bothering to take his eyes off the roof, replied, "Minimal damage to wood work. Slight damage to primary layer of shingles. Over all, should still be in perfect working order."

Trowa nodded and began to head back indoors. He wasn't really one for standing out in the snow barefoot if he didn't have to.

Duo and Wufei, upon seeing that there was nothing of interest like a fire, chose to go back indoors, where they both returned to their seats, argument forgotten.

Quatre stayed outside slightly longer to usher Heero away from his precious 'Klaus Trap' and into the warmth of the safe house, getting Heero his own cup of hot chocolate and some nerve soothing tea for himself.

When Quatre returned indoors, he found Duo rummaging through a desk that was positioned off to the side of the main room, grabbing all the paper and pens that he found inside. Quatre stifled a groan at the sight of Duo. He was getting office supplies all over the floor and Alah knew what he had planned for all that paper. Surrendering to the inevitable, Quatre chose to take a seat on the couch and wait to see what it was exactly that Duo was up to. Apparently, he wasn't the only one to have that idea. All the other pilots had either been instructed to sit or had chose to do so of their own free will, but never the less, all the pilots, excluding Duo, were seated in the living room. Even Heero had chose to stay around and see what the strange American was up to now.

Finally, Duo seemed to be satisfied and he came back to the area near the fire place and dumped an armful of paper and pens onto the floor in the middle of the room, smiling proudly at his handy work.

Wufei just looked from the pile on the floor to Duo and then back down to the pile a few times before finally asking a question to break the silence while Duo seemed to be basking in his own brilliance. "Well? Why have you dumped this mess on the floor?"

Duo faked a mock hurt look before answering the question, "Well now I figured since all of you, excluding Trowa, are slightly Christmas retarded, I figured the best way to teach you is for you to endure all the Christmas traditions of Saint Nick!"

Both Heero and Wufei groaned in unison, while Quatre looked overjoyed to be able to participate in this activity. Trowa just sighed at Duo's logic and asked, "Since I already know all this, do I have to participate?"

Duo just continued beaming down at his pile of paper and pens and replied, "Yes. And so do the rest of you. Or I'm forcing you out of the house and into the snow."

Both Heero and Wufei silently scoffed at Duo's ability to kick them out of the house, but chose to keep silent. If there was anything that they had learned in the past three days about Duo, it was that he was stubborn once he got an idea in his head. The only one of the pilots who could really claim to match Duo's stubborness was Wufei, unless you counted Heero who, instead of arguing people into submission like Duo or Wufei, would just do as he deemed best and ignore any protests. In the end, both Heero and Wufei deemed it best to just save their breath while waiting for a proper explaination.

Duo turned to the group with a large smile on his face and said, "Alright, as I explained to Quatre earlier, you have to write a list for Santa for him to know what you want for Christmas," Trowa groaned, already guessing what Duo had planned, but Duo just continued as if he hadn't heard, "So you all are writing your lists. And they better be good or you get coal. It's a rule. And since I already wrote mine, I'll be back once you all have finished."

Quatre happily stood up to get a piece of paper and pen to start his list, but the others stood around for a few minutes wondering if Duo was actually serious, before finally getting their supplies.

Meanwhile, Duo was busy searching for the fake plastic, potted tree that he was sure he had seen _somewhere _in the house. If only he could remember where it was...

After 10 minutes of searching the small, seven roomed house, Duo finally let out a cry of victory as he found the three foot tall, fake potted palm tree. Wasn't exactly festive, but it would have to do, Duo thought to himself while inspecting the tree.

Duo hoisted the palm tree over his shoulder and carted it into the center of the living room, ignoring the odd looks he was getting from his fellow pilots. Duo positioned the tree in the direct center of the room, with a proud glance at the tree.

From the corner of his eye, Duo noticed that Quatre was raising his hand, looking very much like a young child that had a question in school. With a sigh at Quatre's oddness, Duo said, "Yes, Quatre, what is it?"

Quatre smiled that he was noticed and asked, "What is that for?"

"Christmas tree." was Duo's reply, still wondering how the other's couldn't know such simple stuff like this.

"Oh." Quatre went back to work on his list, adding and crossing out words at random.

At that moment, Heero rose from his chair and began walking towards the door of the house.

Duo watched him curiously, "Heero?" Duo waited but got no reply or even an indication that Heero had heard him. Without a word to any of the other pilots, Heero opened the front door, pulled a knife from his boot and used it to attach the note he had written as his 'Christmas list' to the door.

Duo just figured it was better not to ask and looked over to see that all the others had also finished writing and smiled. "Good, you're done."

"That was pointless." Wufei growled at Duo, folding his list and placing it as a bookmark in his book.

Duo just laughed and smiled at Wufei. "That's the point, Wu'! It's a holiday. Everything about them is pointless!"

Wufei rolled his eyes but remained silent in hopes Duo would forget whatever else he may have planned for their 'holiday fun'.

"So what do we do with the lists?" Quatre asked with a excited expression on his face. He was really beginning to enjoy this. It was like learning first hand about all the different cultures he had read about while at home and plus, anything was better than the tension that had been clouding the house for the last three days.

Duo smiled over at Quatre, beginning to be caught up in his own Christmas spirit, "Well you put 'em under the Christmas tree. Remember, Santa sees and knows all."

After the last sentence, Heero's eyes snapped to focus on Duo. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, his elves see all and report back to him." Duo said and only a few seconds later seemed to realize what he had done. But it was already too late. Heero was off, storming around the house, trying to find out how these elves were spying on him. Duo just hoped explosives weren't going to be involved this time.

After taking up everyone's lists and placing them at the base of Duo's so called 'Christmas tree', Quatre once again turned his attention back to Duo and asked, "Now what?"

"Hm?" Duo turned to look at Quatre, who was looking at him with expectant eyes. "Next? We can't have anything next."

Quatre's excited expression soon turned to what Duo had nicknamed Quatre's you-kicked-my-puppy face. "Why?"

"Because, if you use up too much Christmas spirit 12 days before Christmas, you wont have enough left to go all out the night before Christmas. You gotta' build up."

"Oh." Quatre looked crestfallen but seemed to accept Duo's explanation, and the others just didn't really seem to care much if they stopped the Christmas festivities for the day.

Trying to console Quatre, Duo said, "Hey, don't worry, I'll think up even better stuff for tomorrow. You just wait." With a smile, Duo then left the room, off in search of something fun to do, while everyone else just seemed to settle back into their normal routine with Quatre filing reports, Wufei reading a book, Trowa sharpening his knives, and Heero searching for wayward elves to destroy.

Nothing out of the ordinary in that house. No siree. Just a good amount of healthy Christmas spirit.

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_And now a word from our sponsor..._

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I had so much fun writing this but so much writer's block. I couldn't decide how I wanted to end it. I knew how I wanted it to start but the middle and end were completely unknow for me. 

I know it stinks. I blame the writer's block, but it is the largest thing I've done in one sitting. Go me! I just can't wait to finish this series. It is going to be so great. I've been looking forward to this all year!

And PS: R-r-r-remix! I made some slight edits to this chapter.


	2. Two OffKey Carolers

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing. **Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you.

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Minor mild language. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

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_'On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me_

_Two off-key carolers'_

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Duo groaned and shut his eyes tighter, turning his face into the pillow. Whoever was trying to nudge him awake obviously didn't know him well enough. Duo needed at least 13 hours of sleep if he was to think and function properly. And rule #1 for living with Duo: Do NOT bother the God of Death before he's had his daily dose of caffine . 

Duo mumbled something unintelligible into the pillow and slipped a hand under the pillow to wrap his fingers around the trigger of a gun hidden beneath it. He decided to give whoever it was two more seconds before he started to shoot.

As if his assailant knew exactly what Duo was planning, the insistent hands that had been nudging his shoulder drew away.

Duo just smiled to himself. Finally, some peace. The braided pilot nuzzled into the nice warm pillow and waited for sleep to once again to wash over him, not caring enough or lucid enough to think to check who it was that was trying to wake him and why.

Just as Duo was finally drifting back to sleep, he leaped from the bed, yelping from the sudden cold that had shocked him awake. Apparently, whomever had been trying to wake him had decided to attempt different tactics. Duo glared across his room at Quatre, who was standing at the foot of his bed, holding Duo's blankets and grinning at Duo as if he hadn't just ripped all the covers off of Duo and torn him from his sleep.

Duo momentarily considered walking back to his bed, grabbing the gun, and filling the blond pilot with lead, but that idea was cast away due to Duo's need to behave in honor of Christmas. Plus, Duo was too cold to fire a gun. The black, silk boxers he was wearing did absolutely nothing to keep out the cold. Grumbling his discontent, Duo walked around the room, picking up clothes off the floor where they had been disgaurded.

Through Duo's changing process Quatre didn't say a word and merely watched Duo walk around the room with an expectant look on his face. The only change in Quatre's happy demeanor was a slight cringe as he saw Duo picking dirty clothes up off the floor and wearing them.

Duo glanced at Quatre out of the corner of his eye as he pulled on a black pair of jeans. "In case no one's told you, don't wake me up before 12:00pm." Duo informed Quatre with an unhappy tone to his voice but the crankiness that he normally felt right after waking up was mostly gone.

Quatre looked over at Duo with a confused expression and then to the digital clock on Duo's nightstand. The neon green numbers flashed '1:12pm' at him. Quatre then directed his attention back to Duo. "But it's 1:12pm," Quatre said in a concerned voice.

"Mere technicallity," Duo huffed in response and finally got the pants secured around his waist. "So what brings you into my humble living space anyway?" Duo asked while pulling a deep blue shirt over his head.

"Well, two things really. Wufei said that you were the best at hacking into computers."

Duo beemed from the compliment, grinning happily. "Well that is definitely true, but quit beating around the bush. I hate it when people do that."

Quatre ducked his head and shuffled his feet. "Well, do you remember how Heero was on the lookout for wayward, spying elves?"

"Yes. What about it?" Duo asked with a growing sense of dread. He just hoped that explosives weren't involved this time.

"Well, he's installed a security system."

"So? How's that bad and why does that require my amazing ability with electronics."

"He attached a lock to every door in the house and to unlock them you need to input a code into the key pad."

"Why not just ask Heero for the code?" Duo asked, becoming annoyed with Quatre for waking him up so 'early' when it could have easily been avoided.

Quatre scowled at Duo for the annoyed look Duo was sending him. It wasn't _his _fault that Heero thought elves were out to get him. "I can't ask Heero because he put lock on **every** door." Quatre responded, unhappily.

Well, if Duo wasn't fully awake before, he certainly was then. Duo's head snapped towards the door as he finally got what Quatre was saying. His mouth opened slightly as he struggled to find the words to express the mounting dread that he was feeling.

"So you mean-?"

"Yup."

"And we're-?"

"Uh-huh."

"And Heero-"

"Correct."

"...Damn."

"Yeah."

"Wait. Then how did you get in here if Heero put a lock on my door?" Duo asked curiously.

"Your door didn't have a lock yet when I came to wake you up, but you took so long to wake that Heero put a lock on while I was in here without me realizing." Quatre replied, shooting Duo a look as if to say that this was all his fault. And technically it was.

Duo looked around the room, trying to find a possible escape route. For safety reasons there were no windows in the bedrooms, so breaking a window to the outside wasn't an option. Spiking the door lock would be basically impossible from inside the room. And Heero wasn't very likely to let him out, especially since Duo had called him a spandex wearing robot two days before. But really, he had deserved it. "I Spy" was a great game and Heero didn't have to go so far as to call it a 'childish and infantile waste of time and thought'.

Duo sighed and walked over to a computer chair that was by the desk. He dragged the rolling chair directly across from the door on the opposite side of the room. He then positioned the chair with the seat of the chair facing away from him and propped his foot up on the seat of the chair. Quatre, already having guessed what Duo was planning to try, stepped off to the side and watched Duo anxiously.

With a grunt, Duo pushed the chair off and sent it rolling towards the door. With a loud crash the chair collided with the door and spun off to the side.

Duo walked over to the door to inspect the damage.

Yep.

It was just as Duo had suspected. Shoving the chair into the door was really just him trying to see if Lady Luck still loved him, it really had nothing to do with trying to break the door. He already knew it wouldn't work. For the same reason that none of the bedrooms had windows, all of the doors were made from a thick, damage resistant metal that was only encased in wood to make it appear to be ordinary. It would take nothing short of twenty pounds of explosives to break down that door.

Apparently, good ol' Lady Luck had found someone else to be her lover. She had obviously left Duo to fend for himself.

With a loud sigh Duo turned away from the undamaged door and turned towards Quatre. "So, it looks like we could be in here a while."

Quatre groaned and flopped ungracefully to the floor. " I was afraid you would say that. So what do we do now?"

Duo walked over and took a seat next to Quatre on the floor. "Well you mentioned that you came in here for two things?"

"Oh yeah!" Quatre shouted, the bright smile again returning to his face, "You said yesterday that we can't learn anything more about the Christmas traditions until today. And I was wondering what the next thing to learn was."

Duo laid back on the floor and thought silently to himself. Slowly a wide smirk grew on his face as an idea formed in his head. Finally, as he got his thoughts in order, Duo sat back up and turned to smile disarmingly at Quatre. "Well the next lesson is caroling."

"What?" Quatre asked with a perplexed, yet excited look on his face.

"It's festive singing. You'll love it." Duo responded with a smile. "Alright which song do you want to learn, 'Jingle Bells', 'O Christmas Tree', 'Ol Saint Nick', or 'The 12 Days of Christmas'?"

Quatre thought it over a bit before finally coming to a decision, "'The 12 Days of Christmas' if you don't mind."

Duo gave a whoop of joy, his smile widening further. "I was hoping that you'd pick that one. It's my favorite." Duo said with a smile. Quatre smiled back, glad that he had made a good decision then settled down into a comfortable position to be ready to learn the song.

"Alright, this is a repeating song. What you're gonna' do is you say the first line, then the second line for the first verse. Then for the second verse you repeat the first line, a new line and then-" Duo cut himself off noticing the confused look that Quatre was giving him.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

Quatre just shook his head no and Duo gave a dramatic sigh. Sometimes he swore that these people thought everything was rocket science.

"Fine, I guess I'll just have to show you by example. But listen carefully. Here is the first line of the song, 'On the first day Christmas my true love gave to me,' That is the line that starts out every verse no matter what." Duo said and then looked over at Quatre to see if he had gotten that.

Quatre nodded his head to show that he understood and sat up straighter so he could hear the rest.

"Alright, then it goes, 'A partridge in a pear tree.' And that is the end of the first verse." Duo said, once again seeing Quatre nod in understanding.

"But why would anyone give someone a partridge in a pear tree? Those are horrible gifts." Quatre asked looking slightly confused.

Duo just sighed, "You mentioned something about having sisters right?"

"Yeah?"

"So, when you go to buy them gifts do you ever know exactly what to buy them?"

"No. I really can never seem to get exactly what they want."

"Exactly!" Duo shouted, having finally reached his point, "That's why she gets some bird in a tree. The guy has given up on trying to get her a good gift. But that's completely besides the point. Now let's see if you got the first verse. Sing it with me on three."

"One." Duo started while Quatre looked slightly nervous.

"Two." Quatre looked like he was about to cry.

"Three! _On the first day of Christmas my-" _Duo suddenly stopped in his rendition of the song when he realized that he could only hear his voice. "...Why aren't you singing?"

"I can't sing." Quatre said, looking down at the ground.

Duo just laughed and clapped Quatre on the shoulder, "That's the beauty of caroling. It doesn't matter if you can sing or not. The only way you can carol badly is if you don't at least sound like you're having fun. Trust me. Back at Maxwell Church when they used to make us go door to door caroling, only half of us could actually sing in tune. And then the other half could never keep up with the song or remember the words." Duo said, laughing slightly at the memory of Melody being the only one in their group that could sing all the notes that Sister Helen asked of them, and that was because she was the only one in Duo's group that had ever had singing lessons.

Quatre smiled as Duo spoke and lifted his head up as he started to feel the embarrassment ebb away.

"So, let's try that again, and this time I better hear ya'." Duo said and took a breath to start the count down again.

"One" Quatre took a deep breath to settle his nerves.

"Two."

"Three! _On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me,_

_A partridge in a pear tree!_" This time both pilots were singing, but Quatre hadn't exaggerated at all when he had told Duo that he couldn't sing. His voice was terribly off key and at certain parts he sang the wrong melody, but he was sure to try and keep smiling as he forced out each note.

After they finished the verse Duo winced slightly and stuck a finger in his ear as if to try and force out the ringing and then smiled over at Quatre. "Well that wasn't too bad. I've defiantly heard worse." Quatre smiled over at Duo, and then waited for Duo to continue. "Alright, now that it sounds like that you got the first verse down, now onto the second verse. It goes like this, 'On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me,

Two turtle doves

And a partridge in a pear tree.' You starting to get how the pattern of this song is going to go?"

Quatre thought over what he had just heard for a moment and then nodded to show that he had gotten it. "Yeah I think I get it. We're just adding lines to what we already have and changing the number of the day."

"Good. So do you want to try that verse or should I just teach you what all the gifts for each of the 12 days are and then we try to carol out the song?"

Quatre thought for a moment before finally coming to the decision that he was a gundam pilot and he should be able to get something as simplistic as a song with out repeating after Duo for each verse before singing it. "Just teach me what each of the days are and I think I'll be able to figure it out."

Duo just shrugged his shoulders, "Alright. If you think you're up to it." Duo said, not sure the blond pilot could handle all of them at once. He just wasn't used to being around people who were trained to be quick thinkers like he was. "The third is three French hens, then four calling, five golden rings! Then six geese a-laying, seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and finally twelve drummers drumming." Duo recited from memory before taking a deep breath. "You got all that?"

Quatre sat silently trying to take in all the the new information before finally speaking. "Why would a boyfriend want to give his girlfriend eight maids, or nine dancing ladies? Those sound like gifts you would give to a man not a lady." Quatre remarked.

Duo sat stunned for a few moments, not expecting the Arabian pilot to make a comment about giving away women, and then started laughing, "Yeah! That would be the sort of gift I would like to get for Christmas, but once again, I don't think this guy thought his gifts completely through, and he probably had an obsession with birds. But you ready to try out the song?"

"Yes. I think I'm ready." Quatre responded with a nod of determination.

"Ok then. One."

"Two."

"Three. _On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me,_

_A partridge in a pear tree!_"

"_On the second day for Christmas my true love gave to me, _

_Two turtle doves_

_And a partridge in a pear tree._"

The two pilots continued on like that for over an hour, after having to stop multiple times so Quatre could try and remember the lyrics or because Duo would need a second to control his laughter at Quatre's expense. By the time they had reached ten both boys could hardly say a word through their uncontrollable laughter. And about the time they started eleven, the two boys heard a beeping noise from the door and had to stop singing so they could hear better.

Silently, Duo walked over to his bed and grabbed the gun that he always kept under his pillow and Quatre slid a jagged edge knife out of his boot. Both boys had their attention focused on the doorway.

A few seconds later, the door swung wide open and a very annoyed looking Heero stood in the doorway. "Would you two stop torturing cats in here!" Heero shouted, glaring down at the two boys.

Both Quatre and Duo lowered their weapons and stared in shocked silence at the now open door. In the same second they both seemed to snap out of their trance and rushed for the doorway. Quatre dived out the door on his stomach and hit the outer hallway while laughing hysterically and Duo wasn't far behind him. Finally! They were both free.

Heero just stood, staring in silence at the two idiots lying on the hallway floor before finally deciding to say something. "What are you two doing?"

Duo whipped his head around to glare at Heero, "No! I think the real question is why did you lock us in our rooms!"

Heero just glared at Duo, "I didn't lock you in your rooms."

"Yes you did! You put electronic locks on the outside of the doors!" Duo shouted, pointing angrily at the panel on the wall next to his open doorway.

Heero rolled his eyes at Duo's behavior and also at Quatre who was still on the ground laughing uncontrollably. "Yes. On the _outside_."

Duo intensified his glare at Heero, shooting him his best God of Death look. "What do you mean? It still locked us in."

"No. It keeps things out."

"But we were trapped inside!"

"Next time try the door knob idiot. The lock only works on the outside." Heero stated before turning and walking down the hallway to his room.

Both Duo and Quatre sat silently for a few seconds and looked at each other, before they both burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter.

_About 30 minutes later..._

Duo sat at the kitchen table with Quatre, finally sipping his well desrved and needed coffee. Duo inhaled the fresh scent of the coffee and sighed contentedly. This is exactly what he needed. It was unhealthy for Duo to start his mornings without coffee. He had gotten hooked on the stuff ever since he was eight and ever since he's been addicted. He had a problem, he'd admit it.

Quatre laughed at the blissful look on Duo's face and poured some tea for himself. After everything that had happened that morning, he couldn't really blame Duo for enjoying his coffee so much. In fact, he was looking forward to his morning cup of tea probably just as much as Duo had been looking forward to his coffee.

Duo put down his cup as he realized what he had forgotten in all the morning's excitement. Duo got to his feet and started to walk towards the bathroom. "Be right back." Duo called over his shoulder to Quatre. After a full nights sleep, it was a custom that Duo 'empty the tank' first thing when he woke up and this was most certianly nothing to interfere with. And that day was no exception.

Quatre stared after his friend in confusion as he raced down the hallway. 'Now what got into him?' Quatre wondered. He just gave a mental shrug and decided that whatever it was, it really didn't matter at that particular moment and he would just ask Duo later. With a small smile, Quatre leaned his back against his chair with the intention of just enjoying the moment of peace that he had been blessed with.

Sadly, Quatre's blessing was a short lived one as suddenly he heard a shout from down the hallway. "ARG!" he heard Duo shout, "YUY! YOU GIVE ME THE DAMN KEY NUMBER FOR THIS BATHROOM, **NOW**!"

It was at that moment that Quatre realized that they had forgotten to ask Heero for the codes to all the doors. _'Oops.' _Quatre thought with a small laugh to himself. He was sure that Heero would come to Duo's rescue...eventually.

Oh no. Lady Luck most certainly did not love Duo that day.

* * *

_And now a word from our sponsor:_

* * *

Yes. Yes. I know. I'm behind schedual. Better late than never. But I just couldn't figure out what to do. I know what each chapter is going to revolve around (kinda') because I already have the end song worked out (kinda'), but I just don't know how to give them a plot. 

But for a late piece of work, I am rather proud of how this one turned out. I really do like this chapter. So far, definatly my favorite. Though I am a bit sad that this didn't have the same amount of Christmas cheer as I wanted it to.

Please leave me comments. Even if they're bad ones. I survive off of attention. And I need ideas. Lots of ideas.


	3. Three Elven Spies

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing.

**Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you. But this is probably my most favorite of all story arches. I just can't wait for chapter 12! It's gonna' be so great. I am really tempted to skip all chapters in front of it and just go straight to it. But if I did that it would completely ruin the ending and the ending wouldn't make sense anymore.

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Minor mild language. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

* * *

_On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me_

_Three elven spies._

* * *

Heero curiously poked at the multicolored brick that Duo had plopped on their kitchen table and called 'Christmas spirit in food form'. The other pilots were also gathered around the odd food product. Trowa had a look of mild curiosity; Quatre wore an excited look, just waiting for Duo to explain how this was related to the holiday; and Wufei was glaring at Duo who was looking as if he was just waiting for someone to hand him an award for his genius. Heero just figured this was probably another one of those weird, American things. 

Heero looked up from the thing on the table to look at Duo. After waiting a few moments for Duo explain, Heero finally realized that Duo seemed to be caught up in basking in his own glory and if he was waiting for Duo to snap out of it on his own he would be waiting a long time. Heero cleared his throat loudly, drawing Duo's attention away from the abomination on their kitchen table.

"Huh?" Duo said, finally seeming to come back to reality.

"What is that?" Heero asked him in an angry voice.

"What is what?" Duo asked, looking confused.

"That abomination." Heero said, motioning to the tray on their kitchen table.

Duo smiled and shouted, "Now Heero, what have I told you about talking about Trowa that way!?" Duo then quickly ducked a punch to the head from Trowa and laughed, "You know I'm just jealous Tro'. But what was your question again Heero?"

Heero growled and and pointed to the aforementioned abomination. "What is that?"

Duo laughed. "Oh, sorry. Maybe I should have explained better. That is a fruit cake. The traditional dessert of Christmas!"

Duo's exclamation that the colorful brick was supposed to be edible just cemented something Heero had suspected all along: American's were crazy. All of them.

"So this is supposed to be food?" Quatre asked curiously and picked up a fork off the table to poke at the fruit cake. It didn't seem edible. It seemed more like something that Quatre would use as a weapon during a fight.

"Of course it is!" Duo shouted, offended. How could they not know that it was food!? One of the many things he would never be able to forget about L2 was that every December Sister Helen and Sister Mary would cart out the fruit cake.

"Maxwell, I know you'll eat anything, but I assure you, there is no way on Earth that you are getting one piece of that in my mouth." Trowa stated clearly, casting the fruit cake a suspicious look as if he suspected that it may try to attack him at any given moment.

"But it's part of the Christmas tradition!" Duo whined.

"No." Trowa stated firmly. "I've done Christmas before and never once has anything like this been essential to the experience."

"Well that's just because you celebrated wrong!" Duo protested.

"No." Trowa repeated.

"It doesn't look so bad." Quatre said, trying to play the part of mediator.

"Yes it does Winner." Heero snapped at him.

"But if you squint your eyes and tilt your head to the right just a bit," Quatre said while demonstrating, "It looks...appetizing."

"Face it Winner," Wufei said, glaring at the fruit cake, "The thing does and always will look awful. I think who ever cooked this did so with their eyes shut."

Quatre fell silent. He really didn't have much ground to stand on in this argument. He did want to learn more about the Christmas culture, but he didn't see how eating something that looked like the bastard child between rotten fruit and a crayon factory, could help him learn anything.

Duo and Trowa just continued their argument as if no one had said anything.

"Well it is essential and you havn't even tried it yet!" Duo argued, standing nose to nose with the much taller pilot, and glaring up at him.

"And I'm telling you there is not a chance that that thing isn't poisonous!" Trowa growled back, sending Duo a glare of his own, though it was a bit hampered since only one of his eyes were visible. Trowa didn't trust the other boy enough to take suspicious looking food from him. Plus, he just didn't want to try it. It looked icky.

"Fine! But you have to cut and serve it then. I'm not letting you get out of this tradition completely." Duo huffed angrily, while walking over to grab a knife so Trowa could cut up the fruit cake.

Trowa just smirked. It was a momentous day in history. Someone had finally forced Duo to budge in a disagreement. Next thing OZ might change their ways and become something similar to PETA instead of the cold blooded killers they were. It was so stunning in fact that all the other pilots had gone silent to stare in amazement at Trowa.

Duo just angrily shoved the knife into Trowa's hands and walked over to sit in a bar stool at the island in the center of the kitchen.

Still wearing the smirk, Trowa stepped towards the fruit cake. It didn't take long for Trowa to realize that he had been to quick to let his guard down with Duo. He had been stupid to think that Duo would actually let him win an argument. Trowa was really starting to realize that even though Duo seemed a bit air-headed at times it was only so that when he decided to be sly or devious you wouldn't see it coming until it was too late. And for Trowa it was most certainly too late.

By the time Trowa realized what he had been tricked into he was already attempting to push the knife into the fruit cake. And well it was also around that time that Trowa realized that the fruit cake had more in common with a brick than had first been suspected. It was most certainly as hard as a brick.

The smirk quickly fell off Trowa's face and he focused all his attention on the offending fruit cake. He placed one hand on one end of the fruit cake to brace it and then tried to cut again, this time throwing his weight into and straining every muscle in his arm.

He was a gundam pilot and he _refuse_ to be defeated by a festive food product. The other three pilots around him looked on in terrified amazement as Trowa shoved down hard on the blade and yet made absolutely no dent in it, meanwhile Duo sat back and chuckled in the background.

Duo laughed at Trowa's expense, as he enlisted Wufei's help to try and cut the fruit cake. This was better than cable. Duo began to laugh harder as Trowa began to try to pound the knife into the fruit cake with the hilt of another knife. Priceless.

Suddenly, Duo leaped from his chair as he saw Heero take out his gun and point it at the fruit cake. "No! Wait!" Duo yelled, rushing forward and grabbing the gun out of Heero's hands.

"What?" Heero asked, shooting Duo a glare that would have made lesser men cry. And the glare Trowa was sending him wasn't much better.

"You can't shoot it!" Duo yelled indignantly, while taking the bullets out of the gun just to be on the safe side, because seriously, when was the last time Heero had listened when he had told him not to shoot something?

Heero intensified his glare and growled, "Why not?"

Handing the unloaded gun back to Heero and pocketing the ammo, Duo replied, "Because it would get gun powder and metal shavings in the food and that tastes nasty."

With that said Duo walked back to his bar stool to continue to watch them try to Duo something as simple as cut and serve a fruit cake.

This'll teach 'em. Duo's trademark smirk came back as he watched Trowa about panic as once again his attempts failed. Duo decided that he should celebrate with some good 'ol fashioned relaxing in the living room, so he got up from his seat and went into the main room of the safe house and took a seat on the comfiest couch and stretched his arms behind his head, getting in a comfortable position.

With a sigh, Quatre figured this was probably going to take a while. Trowa had already given up on the knife and was now attempting to crack it by banging it against the side of the table, since Duo had forbidden them from using a gun. Figuring that they would probably be at that for more then an hour, Quatre headed out into the main room to sit down next to Duo, and was also soon joined by Wufei.

Wufei stomped over to Duo and stood directly in front of where the braided boy sat. "You don't really expect us to actually eat that do you?"

Duo smirked up at Wufei, "No. But I did expect to get someone to try and cut it just for kicks." Duo stated with a laugh.

"As I thought." Wufei huffed, and took a seat in the chair to the right of the couch.

Quatre laughed at Duo's confession. It seemed that Trowa had fallen right into Duo's trap and had even roped Heero into it. "So then if it really isn't edible then why make it?" Quatre asked.

"Because during Christmas it is a tradition to find unsuspecting people and try to sucker them into eating fruit cake. But normally they're just for decoration." Duo responded with a wide smile.

Quatre chuckled. He really was starting to like this Christmas thing.

"When are you going to tell Trowa and Heero that? It would be dishonorable to let them continue for too much longer." Wufei said glancing towards the kitchen before adding, "Plus, it is only a matter of time before Yuy decides to try a more explosive method."

Duo laughed and lounged backwards in his seat. "Ahh. I'll let them figure it out. If they're smart enough to become gundam pilots, they should be smart enough to figure out the mystery of fruit cake on their own." Duo stated with a contented look on his face.

Wufei nodded in agreement. Duo defiantly had a point there. Plus, he was only sixteen. He couldn't be expected to not derive at least some enjoyment from watching others make fools of themselves.

The friendly air in the living room was soon broken as the loud sound of a gunshot cut through the air. Duo lept to his feet with a growl, "Damn it! I told them not to use a gun!"

Taking out his own gun, Duo ran into the kitchen, followed by the other two pilots.

What Duo saw when he reached the kitchen made his anger at Heero and Trowa immediately evaporate. Instead he felt the feeling he normally got when fighting. Adrenaline began to pump through his veins and his focus narrowed down to the five people standing in front of him. Standing in the kitchen were two OZ soldiers, one of them on the ground clutching a gunshot wound in the arm and the other holding up his hands in surrender to Heero and Trowa who were pointing guns at his head.

Duo brought up the gun he was holding and pointed at the soldier on the ground, just in case he chose to try anything. Behind him Wufei grabbed for his guns and directed it at the standing soldier.

"How did you know we're here?!" Heero shouted at the soldier he was pointing his gun at.

The soldier just glared at him and said nothing, refusing to give up any information to the pilots.

Heero glared at the soldier and hissed, "If you don't start talking, I'll k-"

Heero never had time to finish his statement, because apparently the two soldiers in their kitchen weren't the only people there. Another soldier rounded the corner from the hallway out to the bedrooms and had fired a shot that just barely missed Heero's head.

That split second was all the other soldier needed to break away from Heero and whip out a gun.

All pilots, realizing that the OZ soldiers had gained the upper hand, all dove to hide behind various pieces of furniture. Both Heero and Duo hid behind the kitchen island, Trowa behind the pantry door, and Wufei crouched down behind the cabinets.

Heero cursed in Japanese as two shots embedded themselves in the table. The soldiers' guns could most defiantly fire faster than he could move and the moment Heero's head got out from behind the table it would be shot clear off.

Duo was just about to turn and make a suggestion to Heero when:

_Smack!_

_Thud._

Duo sat silently for a few seconds, and when no more gunshots were fired, decided to take a chance and peek around and see what was going on.

When Duo peered around the edge of the table he saw Quatre standing over two now unconscious OZ soldiers and holding the fruit cake in his hand. Once Quatre saw Duo, he started laughing and held up the fruit cake. "I think I finally found a use for it."

Duo laughed and then came out from behind the table, followed by the others. "Most creative use of Christmas spirit I've ever seen!" Duo declared while laughing.

"Yes. But now we must find a way to better keep out spying elves." Heero muttered while walking over to the door to check the locks.

Duo shot Heero a confused look. "Huh?"

"Klaus's cleverness is astounding but I think I can prevent this from repeating itself." Heero responded, already tinkering with the lock.

"But those are O-"

"And I'll have to add more explosives to the roof."

Before Heero could get any farther, Trowa marched over to Quatre and took the fruit cake from him, then hurled it at Heero, hitting him on the head and knocking him unconscious. Living in a circus as a part of a knife throwing act finally came in handy. "I'm not fixing the roof again." Trowa muttered, passing the fruit cake back to Quatre.

Duo just watched Heero fall to the ground before declaring, "And you see kids, that is what happens when you have _too much_ Christmas spirit."

The other pilots just stood there, completely stunned by Trowa's actions.

Duo just shook his head at the other's shock and started to walk to his room, while whistling 'Deck the Halls', and leaving the other pilots to stand in the kitchen and stare in astonishment at the unconscious Heero.

* * *

_And now a word from our sponsor..._

* * *

Oh man! I had so much fun writing this one I thought my head was about to explode. I finally figured out how to encourperate a fruit cake into my series! Plus, I finally got one whole chapter done in a day. And I even got started on another. Go me.

But anyway, I just want to thank all you people so much for reading this. You wouldn't believe how many people read this in such a short time. I about cried I was so happy. But yet I only get 5 comments out of 300 readers. Oh well. Beggers can't be choosers.

Please leave me a comment giving me ideas! Writer's block is getting me off schedule!


	4. Four Disfigured Snowmen

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing.

**Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you. But this is probably my most favorite of all story arches. I just can't wait for chapter 12! It's gonna' be so great. I am really tempted to skip all chapters in front of it and just go straight to it. But if I did that it would completely ruin the ending and the ending wouldn't make sense anymore.

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Minor mild language. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

* * *

_'On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me_

_Four disfigured snowmen.'_

* * *

Duo sighed loudly. He was extremely bored. Extremely bored. He was bored to the point where he couldn't even muster the enthusiasm to get up and do something to cure his boredom. 

The other pilots weren't much better off. Quatre was drumming his fingers on the arm of the plush chair he was seated in, Wufei was attempting to meditate on a zen rug in front of the fireplace, Heero was disassembling and reassembling a toaster, Trowa was sitting on a the couch staring off into space, and Duo was sprawled on the floor trying to count the tiles on the ceiling.

So far there were 32 off-white, cottage cheese colored ceiling tiles.

The five teenage boys were just not used to having time to kill, normally they were too busy killing everything else. If they weren't blowing up OZ bases, they were running for their lives. If they weren't running for their lives, they were in a gundam battle. If not that, they were hacking computers (or if you were Duo, you would be multitasking and hacking computers, playing computer games, chatting, holding people hostage and eating). But the fact of the matter was they always had _something_ to occupy their attention.

Duo was actually starting to miss the every day life or death situations of the war. Though sadly, if his guess was correct, he was probably going to be stuck there with the four freakish pilots until Christmas at the very least. Duo sighed loudly again to express his discontent with the current situation.

Wufei opened one eye to glare at Duo. "It's kind of hard to reach a higher plain of consciousness when you keep making those annoying, unnecessary noises." Wufei growled.

Noticing that an argument was about to start, Quatre stopped drumming his fingers and reached off to the side table, picking up a pad of paper and a marker. Quatre had given up on trying to stop these arguments after the first few days. It was a waste of both time and energy. Wufei and Duo always seemed to be bickering about something. Trying to stop them would be like trying to stop the dawn from coming. Quatre just figured it was their way of showing that they cared about each other, because Quatre could sense a feeling of competitive comradery between the two of them. Plus, he was barely 16, he couldn't be expected to try and act like a mature adult _all_ the time.

"Oh stop lying, Chang." Duo huffed, "We all know you aren't really meditating. Who actually does that any more?" Duo asked, then glanced over at Quatre who had written down a 5.5 on the paper and was holding it up. Not the best score, but still not bad for a warm-up.

Wufei intensified his glare. Even though what Duo had said was dead on, it would be a cold day in Hell before Wufei admitted it. Every day at 10:00am Master O had always had Wufei 'meditate'. But there was always a problem, Wufei neither knew how to meditate, or knew how to know when he actually did meditate. For about two months Wufei attempted to 'clear his mind' as Master O had commanded, and for two straight months he failed at it. It would always going something like:

_'Alright don't think anything.'_

_'Clear the mind. Just clear the mind...'_

_'Wait, was that a thought?'_

_'Oh! Ah! That was defiantly a thought!'_

_'Oh no, I'm still thinking.'_

_'Alright stopping...**NOW!**'_

_'Well that's an odd looking bug on Master O's jack-'_

_'Shoot.'_

_'O.k. Wufei, just think of blackness.'_

_'...Black.'_

_'No! Not the word. The color. Don't think about the word.'_

_'Black.'_

_'No wai- **Black**-t! I can'–**Black**-t think of th–**Black**-e word! Why is it that the moment I decide -**Black**- not to think of something, my brain decides that is the most fascinating thing in the world?! Who's in charge here?'_

_'Oh great. I'm thinking things again...'_

_'...Black.'_

_'...Stupid mind.'_

After two months of enduring that same two hours of trying not to think of anything, Wufei finally decided that it was probably just better if he only pretended to meditate and thought about what ever was on his mind instead. That seemed like a much better use of his time. Now it was just out of habit that everyday at 10:00am he sat on the floor and pretended to meditate. It wasn't like there was anything better to do. But pigs would fly before Wufei actually admitted any of this to Duo, instead he opted to snarl, "People with minds to clear meditate Maxwell."

Quatre wrote down and held up a 6.5.

Duo cursed under his breath. Now he was really going to have to make a come back.

"Well maybe some of us don't need to spend hours on end just trying to understand our own minds." Duo shot back, "When you can't understand your own thoughts that's a lovely little thing we back on L2 would call _insanity_. Or sometimes homosexuality. Take your pick."

Quatre chuckled and wrote down a 7.3.

Wufei growled. A man's sexual orientation was kind of a big deal in his culture. The Chinese were worse at accepting homosexuality than the Catholics. Plus, once someone's spouse died in his culture they weren't even supposed to look at anyone else for the rest of their lives. "And this is coming from the person who has hair down to his thighs and spends over an hour in the bathroom." Wufei remarked.

Again Quatre chuckled and wrote down a 7.

Duo just smirked. This thing was already won in his opinion. "Woah 'Fei. I said that it could mean one of _two _things. You jumped to the gay conclusion pretty fast, didn't you?" Duo taunted, leaning back down to lounge placidly on the floor.

By now Quatre was laughing out right and held up an 8.8. He then flipped to another page and put a mark under a column labeled 'Duo'. The two columns, one labeled 'Wufei', the other 'Duo', had about an equal amount of marks.

Wufei just huffed and closed his eyes again. "You're just lucky I don't hit girls." He growled, causing Duo to burst into fits of laughter. With that said, Wufei once again began to fake meditatation. As much as it seemed like Wufei was mad at Duo, he really did have to admit that their constant bickering was a good way to relieve pent up boredom.

After a few minutes of silence, Duo suddenly shouted out in anger and growled at no one in particular.

With a sigh, Wufei once again opened his eyes. "What is wrong _now_ Maxwell?" He asked.

Duo glared up at the ceiling. "Your being obnoxious made me loose count!" Duo growled at Wufei.

"_My_ being obnoxious Maxwell?" Wufei asked with a slight grin.

"Yes. You-"

"Alright! Duo it's been a day and you still haven't explained another Christmas tradition." Quatre interrupted. He knew he had promised himself to try and be a bit less of a mediator, but some habits were hard to break.

Duo's face instantly cleared of all aggrivation and was replaced by the regular wide smile. "Oh yeah! Thanks for reminding me Blondie. I almost forgot." Duo said, smiling over at Quatre. He then got up to his feet. "For today's activity you all need to get some warmer clothes on." With that said, Duo raced off to his room to get warmer clothes on but stopped halfway to the door to say, "And if anyone decides not to get warmer clothes on to try and skip this, I'll force 'em out into the snow in whatever they happen to be wearing." He turned his head and flashed all the occupants of the room a bright smile over his shoulder and then continued to walk to his room.

Everyone in the room recognized that smile. It was the same smile he wore in gundam battles. Some of them may have thought they could take on the person on the other end of that smile, but Quatre really didn't want to take the chance. Quatre heaved himself to his feet and began to walk to his room, shooting the other pilots a look as if to say 'You all had better follow my example because I'm smarter'.

With a sigh, Heero also got to his feet and began to follow behind Quatre. As if Heero was the signal for the remaining two pilots, they both got to their feet and also went to get dressed in warmer clothes.

By the time the other four pilots had finished getting dressed, Duo was already completely decked out in black and white snow gear and was standing in the center of the main room, tapping his foot impatiently.

When the four other pilots finally stepped out into the main room, Duo shouted out, "Finally! Sure took you guys long enough." He then struck a heroic pose and declared, "To the outdoors!" Duo grinned widely and threw the front door open.

Four very unhappy pilots followed Duo out into the snow, each of them muttering curses in their native languages, or in Quatre's case, almost every language known to man. They were all cold and didn't see why they couldn't learn about Christmas from inside. Trowa was especially unhappy since he already knew about almost everything Duo had talked about.

"Alright!" Duo shouted, "Next lesson time. Snowmen!" Seeing Heero immediately reach for a gun he added, "Snowmen that aren't alive." Duo then leaned and, picking up a handful of snow, he began to pack it into a tight ball. "Now you see what you got to do is make a ball out of the snow to begin with."

Surprisingly, without question or complaint, all of them slowly reached down to mimic Duo's actions. Most of their snow balls ended up, putting it nicely, looking not so pretty. Both Quatre's and Trowa's ended up being too loosely packed and fell apart the moment they opened their hands, and both Heero's and Wufei's ended up being pulverized because the pilots had tried to pack them too roughly.

With a sigh, Duo finally realized just how Christmasly retarded his fellow pilots really were. It was then that he realized that not only were they Christmasly retarded, but they were also snowly retarded. Duo was shocked that anyone could go for fifteen years and never once have to create a snowball. God help their poor souls. From that day forward he was going to make sure that he did everything in his power to help these misfortunate people. Why did the smart people always get all of the burden and all of the work?

Duo handed out the four snowballs that he had made and the other pilots held them in their hands carefully. Duo then walked back to his place and picked up his snowball. "Alright, now pay attention. This part is important." Duo said as he rolled the snowball across the snow, causing it to pick up the snow off the ground and increase to about double its beginning size. "You see. If you just roll it across the snow, it picks up snow. All of you just do that until I say stop." Duo instructed and watched as the other pilots got to work.

Three hours later, all the pilots had finally finished their snowmen. It took eight carrots, a lot of rocks, and 41 different branches for the snowmen to be completed after a good deal of the supplies were broken, but finally they were all done. Out of all the snowmen, Heero's was probably the worst. The middle was much too small, the carrot nose was backwards and above the eyes, the three sets of arms Heero had added came out the head and the rocks used for the eyes made it look like the snowman was about to hurl and start dancing for joy at the same time.

Not to say that all the snowmen weren't downright awful. Oh no. All of them looked more like decorations you would use for Halloween than Christmas. Wufei had attempted to make his more life like and in the process ended up making the snowman look like it had been mauled by a dog with a grudge. Trowa had packed the snow too loosely which caused his snowman to collapse. And Quatre's was doomed to fail from the start. Quatre had insisted on trying to give his snowman legs because he said it creeped him out that none of the snowmen had legs. So Quatre had gone out and gotten two sticks then proceded to attempt to prop the main snowball he had wanted to use as a base up on the sticks, but 22 broken sticks later and Quatre finally realized that it probably wasn't going to work.

Oh yes. Duo had been right. His fellow pilots were extremely snowly retarded. In fact, Duo was just amazed that anyone could even be that bad at something so simple and commonplace. He wished he had a camera. He could probably make millions studying these people and their below adequate snow skills.

With a sigh, Duo looked at all the snowmen. "They look-...They look-" Duo said, struggling to find the right word to correctly describe the snowmen.

"Disfigured?" Quatre offered.

"Exactly." Duo said and nodded.

"Well maybe if someone gave better instructions..." Heero complained, glaring at Duo.

"Or maybe if you could just follow instructions right!" Duo said and then shrugged. "Oh well, no use crying over wasted snow. I say we head back inside and forget about Christmas spirit until tomorrow." Without waiting for a response, Duo began walking towards the safe house door, followed by the rest of the pilots who were arguing amongst themselves over who had done the worst.

About two hours later, all the pilots sat on the floor around the fireplace, sipping at hot chocolate.

Duo took a gulp of his drink and then smiled. "You know what? If our life was a story I think today would be the part in the book where it finally reveals the moral of the book."

"And dare I ask what that moral would be?" Wufei asked.

"Hm? Oh just that snowmen are normally made without legs for a reason." Duo said with a sly grin, ducking a blow from Quatre who was laughing.

"Well if I was a snowman, I would most certainly want legs!" Quatre shouted at Duo while laughing.

"Then let's all be glad you're not a snowman!" Duo said with a laugh.

"Come on. Can you really say that if you were a snowman, you wouldn't want legs?" Quatre protested.

Duo just laughed. "I'm the God of Death. I don't need legs to be awesome. But I would be a bit freaked out if I was a snowman that was able to a have an opinion on legs in the first place."

Quatre laughed and shoved Duo playfully.

Duo paused in laughing and looked around the room. "Hey, where did Heero go?" Duo asked, noticing for the first time that Heero was no longer present in the group.

"Right behind you." Duo suddenly heard a voice behind him say. Duo whipped around just quick enough to see Heero starting to turn over a bucket over his head. Then every thing turned white. And cold. Very cold.

Duo shook his head and sent snow flying off of his head. He was able to clear his vision and saw Heero standing off to the side, still holding a bucket and looking a bit too smug. The rest of the pilots were laughing hysterically.

Duo got to his feet, now shivering from the cold and shouted, "Hey! What was that for?"

The only one who wasn't laughing too hard to respond was Heero, who stepped forward and said, "It was merely in revenge for making us go out into the snow just to make disfigured blobs."

Duo laughed and leaned down, "Oh, is that so?" He said and then quickly scooped up a handful of the snow by his feet, lobbing it straight at Heero. But after the last night's fiasco Heero had learned that the pilots had a tendency to throw things when they were angry and was able to dodge this time. But what he didn't count on was the second handful of snow that had been thrown and managed to hit him directly in the face.

It was now Duo's turn to laugh as he collapsed to the ground in wild fits of laughter. "Okay. Okay. Even." Duo said in between laughs.

Heero just huffed and scraped some of the snow off his face which he dumped on Duo's head, only causing the braided pilot to laugh harder.

Everyday Heero was getting more and more certain of one simple fact: Insanity was a genetic trait of Americans. Who in their right mind would go out in freezing temperature to just put globs of snow together?

Heero was defiantly going to have to remember to report his finding on the subject to Doctor J after his 'vacation' was over with.

* * *

_And now a word from our sponsor..._

* * *

Ahh! I've never gotten up to five chapters before! This is the first time I've ever stuck with one series for so long. I'm so proud of myself. Not proud of this chapter but I'm still so happy. I would also like to thank all of you lovely people who have left me such nice comments on this. It really helped me to actually get past dreaded number four. 

Even though I don't really like the end result, I loved getting to write about what goes on in Wufei's head. It's always fun to put words in people's brains.

But anyway, you may or may not notice that there was a part of this chapter that could either go in the Yoai direction or the Straight direction because when I had two friends read this they both had different views on it. One, who just so happens to be a 2x5 spaz, took this chapter to have serious hintings that Wufei was a bit light in the loafers. On the other hand my other friend, who couldn't really care about pairings either way because she just likes explosions, took this chapter to just to be confirming his uber straightness. And to tell the truth I didn't mean for it to be either. I can't write pairing stuff. I am forced, due to limited talent, to stick to the humor-but-not-really-actually-funny-but-you-laugh-anyway-just-to-make-the-writer-feel-better section. So take it whichever way you will.

**Please leave me a comment giving me ideas! Writer's block is getting me off schedule!**


	5. Five Drunken Pilots

**Disclaimer:**I do not own Gundam Wing. And anyone who thinks I do has obviously been drinking too much of 'Upscale British' Quatre's tea (long story, don't ask).

**Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you. But this is probably my most favorite of all story arches. I just can't wait for chapter 12! It's gonna' be so great. I am really tempted to skip all chapters in front of it and just go straight to it. But if I did that it would completely ruin the ending and the ending wouldn't make sense anymore.

Oh and another thing. I am NOT on drugs. Thank you.

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Minor mild language. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

* * *

_'On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me_

_Five drunken pilots.'_

* * *

"Hey guys!" Duo shouted while coming in through the back door of the safe house. "I got another Christmas surprise!"

All the pilots sitting in the main room glanced towards the kitchen, where Duo could be heard. They weren't sure if they should be grateful that Duo made it back safely from buying supplies or wish that OZ had captured him before he could make it back with his 'Christmas surprise'. Wufei just shot Quatre an 'I told ya' so' look and then went back to reading his book. He had warned Quatre against sending Duo out with the grocery list. Oh yes. He had warned him long and loud. But had Quatre listened? Of course not. They never listen.

Suddenly Duo burst into the living room with two large, paper grocery bags in his hands. With a large smile on his face, Duo dropped the bags on the table in the center of the room.

Quatre sighed and got to his feet to go inspect the contents of the bags. He just knew Wufei was going to rub his nose in this later. And so was Trowa. Trowa had warned him against his choice too, just in more subtle ways than Wufei.

Cartons. That was all that Quatre saw. Quatre slowly reached into the bag to pull out one of the cartons as Duo watched on, smiling. Quatre read the label which said 'Eggnog'.

Shoot. He could already hear Wufei snickering in the background. Quatre silently thanked Allah that Trowa was in his room doing stretches. He really didn't think he could have two people laughing at him at the same time.

With a sigh, Quatre turned to Duo and said, "Duo, the list said to buy lettuce, milk, cheese, ground beef, coffee, water, and chips. I don't see any of those things in here."

Duo just laughed. "We don't need those things! What we really needed was this!" Duo shouted, snatching the carton away from Quatre and holding it up for all to see. "Eggnog! The drink of the Christmas time gods!"

Quatre could hear Wufei's snickers become all out laughter, even the normally quiet Heero had joined in Wufei's _laugh-at-Quatre-palooza_.

Maybe Christmas **was **overrated like Trowa was constantly suggesting.

Quatre groaned and took the carton back from Duo. "Duo what we really needed were supplies."

Duo just smiled and started to walk to the kitchen, waving off Quatre's protests nonchalantly. "Well I got supplies, they're just different ones than what you asked for. Artistic improvisation!"

"But Duo, now I'm just gonna' have to go out and buy more supplies." Quatre whined. Was it just his imagination or was the laughing getting louder. Nope. The laughing was definitely getting louder.

Duo laughed, "It's cool Quat. I'll get them later." He then entered the kitchen and a loud rummaging sound could be heard from the living room.

Quatre sighed and flopped back down into his seat. Whatever Duo had cooked up with this 'Eggnog' stuff, it probably wasn't going to turn out well especially since they had very little food. No. Scratch that. They had no food other than some oyster crackers ever since lunch and Quatre did not feel like foraging. Foraging was most certainly not his 'thing' as Duo would say. Despite being a gundam pilot and having been trained to live under all conditions, he was still not a live off the land type person.

He _needed_ groceries.

"I told you so." Wufei said to Quatre through his laughter.

Quatre sent a glare over to Wufei and growled, "Whatever Duo is up to, you're going to be the first to try it." He then smirked as the laughter immediately died on Wufei's lips.

Wufei shot a glare straight back at Quatre and hissed, "It was _your _idea for Duo to be the shopper Winner. So it should be your neck on the line here. Not mine."

"Duo is the one here who blends in the easiest." Quatre shot back, "He was the most obvious choice."

Wufei just huffed moodily. His honor wouldn't let him continue this argument if he was in the wrong. And he knew he was. Quatre most defiantly had a point. But didn't mean he couldn't pout about it...wait. Not pout. Guys didn't pout. _Sulk_ about it. Much more masculine and rugged.

But that didn't mean he was going to be Duo's guinea pig.

Just as he was about to tell Quatre so, Duo burst back into the room bearing cups and yelling, "Alright everyone gets a cup and you all have to drink it. I swear this isn't like the fruit cake!" He then shoved a cup in all the other's hands, whether they wanted to accept the gift or not.

Heero stared down suspiciously at the milky tan liquid as if it might explode at any moment and turn into an OZ soldier. "How can we trust you?" Heero asked dubiously.

Duo faked a hurt look and glanced over at Heero. "Now Hee-man, if you can't trust me with this, how ever will you be able to trust me on the battle field."

Heero just glared over at Duo and set his drink on the side table. "I don't trust you on the battle field. I only trust myself and the orders I have been given." He growled.

Duo sighed, almost expecting that response. "Fair enough. I can't say I feel any differently. But honestly, you have to trust me at least a little, or else you would've shot me by now." Duo said with a smirk, knowing what he said had struck home when Heero picked up his drink and downed half of it in one gulp.

As if having been just waiting for Heero's reaction, the other two pilots took drinks from their own cups, though being more careful about doing so.

All of them had different expressions on their faces. Quatre looked pleasantly surprised at the taste. Wufei still looked as if he were being poisoned. Heero looked as if he wasn't sure what to think. And Duo just had a large grin on his face as he drank straight from the carton before pouring himself a cup.

Quatre looked over at Duo as he walked over to sit next to him on the couch. "So what is this stuff? It is actually pretty good." He said, taking another drink from his cup.

Duo laughed and leaned back. "I already told you!" He exclaimed, "Eggnog! Best drink in the world. The sweepers gave it to me once and I've loved it ever since."

Wufei took another cautious drink, and then looked over at Duo. "I actually have to agree with Winner on this. It is actually pretty good. What is it made of?"

Duo just shrugged and took another long drink from his cup. "I dunno'. Eggs?" Duo chuckled at the 'hilarity' of his own statement and then finished off his cup.

"And how many cartons of this stuff do we have?" Heero asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Duo shrugged again and slurred, "I dunno'. I know I bought fourteen but I think I drank about two on the way home."

Quatre about choked on his drink as he looked over in shock at Duo. "But that must have cost you all the money I gave you!" Quatre yelled in surprise.

"Don't worry Quatre. It was buy one get two free." Duo responded cheerily, "It only cost me like 1/8 of the money you gave me. It was a clearance sale."

"Sale?"

Duo blanched and about dropped his drink. "What do you mean, 'Sale?'" Duo asked, mimicking Quatre's voice.

"What is it?" Quatre asked innocently, "Is it another Christmas tradition?"

Duo shook his head and downed the contents of his cup, pouring himself some more. He was most certainly going to need more of it. "No Quat. It isn't a part of Christmas. A sale is the sort of thing that us poor folk appreciate. It is where people in the store lower the prices of select materials."

"Oh." Quatre murmured. He defiantly wasn't one who would get the marvels of a 'sale'. Not with his generous allowance from his sisters each month.

"Alright! Who needs more?" Duo shouted out with a cheery smile, still holding the carton in his hands from when he had poured himself more.

Wufei looked down at his cup and wondered if he should take Duo up on his offer or hide his empty cup behind his back. He was pretty sure that if Maxwell had poisoned his drink he could probably take about one cup full of it. He then sighed and realized even if he shoved the cup down his pants that Duo would find a way to refill it and then force feed the sweet tasting liquid down his throat even if it killed him. It was probably smarter not to resist and give in. Wufei reluctantly offered up his cup to Duo, who promptly refilled it.

Heero, determined not to be shown up by Wufei also offered up his cup. If anyone was going to drink the most here it would most certainly be him. He could take the most of Maxwell's poison. Or certainly more than Wufei.

Wufei noticed the competitive look in Heero's eye and glared over at the other Asian pilot. He was most certainly the most durable of the two. He would show Doctor J how 'perfect' his little soldier boy/lapdog was! Wufei quickly downed the contents of his cup and sent Heero a smirk.

Heero was a bit shocked at justice boy's actions and in response to the obvious challenge he quickly downed the contents of his own cup and shot Wufei a smirk.

Both Duo and Quatre were watching the pair with interested expressions. Neither of them knew Heero to be competitive. That was more Wufei's thing. And even then it was never over something so trivial as who could drink more of Duo's mystery drink. It was normally over things like who could shoot more Ozies in the least amount of time.

Duo quickly tried to keep up in refilling both their cups all the while trying to refill both his and Quatre's cup whenever they happened to be empty.

About two hour and ten cartons of eggnog later all of them sat around, giggling like idiotic girls. Each recounting amusing points in their lives. Basically, they all seemed to be...drunk.

"And then I walked in to find Doctor J and O and they were...Pffft." Suddenly Heero broke down into fits of laughter along with the other three pilots.

"Where was this?" Quatre asked with rapt attention.

"On a trip to L3!" Heero said with another loud laugh.

Suddenly Duo waved a hand to signal everyone to be quiet. "Ooo! I got a game!"

Wufei groaned and laughed, "Please not that Hide and Seek suggestion again."

Duo just laughed and shook his head. "It's not! Ten times better Chang! Just wait!" Duo exclaimed, before getting to his feet and racing to his room, stumbling a few times and then coming back with a large jingling bag.

"What's that?" Quatre asked, laughing as Duo stumbled into his seat.

"Quarters!" Duo shouted with a large grin and dumped the contents of the bag on the table. Out spewed a large amount of quarters and he then sorted them out so that each pilot had about twenty along with a separate pile. "Hey Quat go get Big T." Duo said with a grin.

"Why me?" Quatre whined, wanting to inspect the shiny coins dumped in front of him.

"'Cause he likes you best." Duo said and shoved Quatre up out of his chair.

Quatre grumbled but caved to Duo's will and went off to Trowa's room. Quatre pounded on Trowa's door and shouted out, "Hey Big T, Duo says you gotta' play a game." Quatre then laughed as the door was swung open to reveal a very confused Trowa.

"_Big T_?" Trowa asked, already following Quatre out into the living room. Trowa finally decided that Quatre was spending **way **too much time with Duo and from that day forward he would prevent contact between the two at all costs.

Quatre dragged Trowa over to the couch by the hand and led him to an empty spot on the couch before grinning at Duo and saying, "Got him."

"Good job Quat. Now we can play 'I never...' Best game ever!" Duo shouted with a large grin on his face.

Trowa just groaned and looked over at Duo, "Is that why you had Quatre force me out of my room? For a game?"

"Yep." Duo smiled and handed him a glass of eggnog before continuing his description of the game. "Alright, what ya' do is you say something that you have never done. And then who ever has done that tosses a coin over to the person who said it. Simple enough right?"

He grinned as all the others nodded and Trowa took a cautious sip of his drink.

"Alright then." Duo shouted, "I'll start. I've never ridden a bike. You next 'Ro."

Quatre looked horrified over at Duo as he and Trowa both threw him a quarter.

Heero thought for a moment, trying to figure out how to best get coins before saying, "I've never gotten a tattoo." He knew from seeing Duo walk around in his boxers that he did have one in the shape of a scythe and a grave stone with the number two on the grave along with a large cross on his leg and then bat wings on his shoulder blades but was still mildly surprised when both Quatre and Trowa both threw him a coin along with Duo's.

Duo just snickered and leered at both Trowa and Quatre, "What you got and where at?"

Quatre blushed and lifted up his pants to reveal a grinning moon and the number four on his ankle. Trowa just shook his head and said, "That is no business of your's Maxwell." Before taking another sip of his drink.

Duo just snickered and said, "It's of something vulgar isn't it?"

Trowa just sighed and shook his head. But it was his turn and he thought for a few seconds. "I have never kissed a girl."

Duo laughed and slapped his knee before throwing in a coin. Wufei also threw in a coin. But then the one that shocked him was Quatre, who also threw in a coin. Noticing the stares he was getting, Quatre just shrugged and said, "Sisters on the cheek."

Wufei sighed and then thought for a moment. "I have never been accused of talking too much." He said with a smirk in Duo's direction. Duo just growled and threw him a coin. "I'll get you for that Chang."

Next was Quatre. "I have never piloted a gundam other than my own." Heero glared at Quatre, knowing that question had been meant to get him specifically as he threw Quatre a coin.

Duo smirked. This was his big chance to get Wufei back and he had no intentions of wasting it. "I have never been married." Wufei growled and threw Duo a coin. He would get Maxwell back.

Quatre looked wide eyed at Wufei. "You've been married!?"

"Drop it Winner." Wufei growled and crossed his arms.

Finally, it was back to Heero again and he thought for a moment before saying, "I have never gone to school for anything other than a mission." Duo sighed and threw a coin to Heero, along with Trowa, Quatre and Wufei. Heero smirked as all the other four pilots threw him coins, which he recieved a playful shove for from Duo.

The game continued like that for about two hours with Duo constantly having more coins than anyone else and it eventually turned into something like strip poker where you had to take off clothes instead of giving up coins. Duo had only had to strip off his shirt after gaining everything back. Trowa had lost everything but his underwear. Quatre had to take off both shoes and socks and then his shirt. Heero was down to his spandex shorts. And Wufei had nothing but the skin he was born in. When suddenly Trowa stopped drinking his drink and looked at it curiously. "Duo what did you say this drink was called?" He asked Duo suspiciously.

"Um. Eggnog. Why?" Duo said with a glance in Trowa's direction, who was currently in nothing but boxers.

"You do know that is alcoholic right?" He asked. He could defiantly feel the effects of the alcohol as he felt his mind begin to loosen and secrets felt like they were about to leap from his throat.

Duo looked over at Trowa and smiled. "Well if I didn't know when I bought it, I certainly figured it out when the game turned into a strip tease and then when Wufei said we should get a pole and start to earn money! And if I hadn't figured it out by then, I think that the fact that they all collapsed would have been a dead giveaway." Duo said with a wide grin.

Trowa was shocked. More than shocked. He quickly glanced over to the other three and saw that Duo had been telling the truth and that they were all in fact dead asleep. "You're a sly little devil." He finally managed.

Duo just smirked, "I know." He then got up from his seat and yawned. "Now I'm gonna' crash. Night Tro'. Watch out for hangovers. They'll kill ya'." With that said he began to trek to his room, leaving poor, dumbfounded Trowa in the living room.

Trowa was no longer certain if the pilot of Deathscythe was entirely sane. Or maybe he just had too much Christmas spirit.

* * *

_And now a word from our sponsor..._

* * *

Yes, I know. I caved in with my own standards and had them play a game. Shame on me. I feel horrible. And I also need to remember to give Trowa some show time.

But as for the fact that Duo was able to buy alcohol without a license is a long story that I don't care to relate here and now. In other words, I don't know how he pulled it off. Just humor me and say he did. Just this once.

And I am so surprised I've never seen the nickname 'Big T' before. I really am. It was actually brought up by a friend of mine when we decided to call the G Boys nothing but ridiculous nicknames until someone actually said something about it (the game ended when I thought up 'Wu-diddy' and then ended again when someone commented on my friend's 'DJ Master D').

And also I LOVE YOU PEOPLE. Did you know I've gotten 760 people to read this!? I about had a heart attack. I love humanity right now! Absolutely love them! Especially the portion of humanity that commented. That is like my favorite portion of humanity. That is the portion of humanity that I would send a Christmas present if I actually knew where they lived and had money to buy things. I want a sale! I've got double digit comments! But enough of my rambling. I'm sorry I'm late.

I guess I can rule out getting this story finished before Christmas Day. Buh.

**Please comment and give me ideas. Writer's block is getting me behind schedule. **


	6. Six Freezing Miles

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing.

**Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you. But this is probably my most favorite of all story arches. I just can't wait for chapter 12! It's gonna' be so great. I am really tempted to skip all chapters in front of it and just go straight to it. But if I did that it would completely ruin the ending and the ending wouldn't make sense anymore. Not that it makes sense now.

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Minor mild language. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

* * *

_'On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me_

_Six freezing miles.'_

* * *

"Alright guys keep up!" Duo shouted over his shoulder at the four other extremely aggravated pilots. They all marched tirelessly through a foot of snow, Duo leading the way, followed by Trowa, who was determinedly trying to keep Duo and Quatre apart after the 'Big T' incident, then Quatre was directly after him. Then walked Heero and Wufei. 

None but Duo actually knew what they were looking for. All they knew was that the crazy American's plan somehow involved Wufei's dao, which Duo had forced Wufei to drag along.

"What are we looking for Maxwell?" Wufei growled at Duo, shivering in his thin white clothes and his arms tired from carrying the heavy dao.

Duo just smiled as if he hadn't heard the edge in Wufei's voice. "I told you we're lookin' for a tree." Duo responded cheerily, despite the fact he was freezing and he was starting to get tired. Duo glanced all around him, trying to find an evergreen tree. Any evergreen tree. By this point he would even take one that looked like that one from that little cartoon he used to watch when he was a kid. Ooo...What was it called? Um. Never mind. It didn't matter. It was the one with the big headed kid and his little Christian morals about small Christmas trees and the true meaning of Christmas.

"What tree 02?" Heero growled, his head still throbbing from his hangover after last night. Duo was just lucky Heero in no way associated his pain to the mystery drink Duo had given him last night. Heero had never had alcohol before that night, nor had he even heard of it, thus he had never heard of hangovers. In fact the only one in the group who even knew, or even suspected, that their nausea and aches could be traced back to Duo was Trowa who was quite familiar with alcohol from his time in the circus.

"I'll tell you when I see it." Duo mumbled, still looking for the tree he wanted.

Oak.

Elm.

Oak.

Oak.

Spruce.

ARG! Elm!

Wait! Wait! What was that?! Duo craned his head and looked around the wide trunk of a oak tree and finally saw what he was looking for. A fir tree! The perfect one too. Maybe a little small and dead looking but after walking six miles for one tree he would take anything.

Duo raced over to the tree as fast as he could through the snow, the other pilots just giving him a confused look from where they stood.

The tree was most certainly not the best. In fact, it probably wasn't even alive. It was about Duo's height and a sickly shade of brown. But once again, the six miles and below zero temperatures made it look like the tree version of Jesus.

"I found it!" Duo shouted out, motioning for the other pilots to join him as he lovingly inspected his find.

"Is this what we've been looking for all this time?" Quatre asked tentatively, walking over to look at what Duo was causing such a ruckus about, followed by Trowa, who was still refusing to let Quatre be alone with Duo for over a second. Quatre looked the tree up and down wondering what on Earth Duo would want with a dead, little evergreen tree.

"Yeah! This is it! This is our new Christmas tree! The palm tree was starting to get on my nerves." Duo exclaimed happily.

"But Duo," Quatre ventured carefully, "It's not alive."

"So?" Duo said, looking over at Quatre, smile still in place, "Neither is our current one."

"Yes, but that one's fake. It's _supposed_ to be dead." Quatre argued. He just knew this tree was going to shed dead pine needles all over the carpet and since all the others stereotyped him as the cleanest one, he was probably going to be the one cleaning them up.

"Yeah, but this is actually a traditional Christmas tree." Duo shot back, determined to have his way. Refusing to let the argument continue, Duo motioned for Wufei to come over.

Suspiciously, Wufei walked over to stand next to Duo. "What do you require Maxwell?" Wufei barked.

"This is the part where you're sword comes in handy." Duo said with a smile, still inspecting the tree, "I need you to chop it down."

Wufei's eyes widened in shock and then narrowed to glare at Duo. "Absolutely not Maxwell! You've lost your mind if you think that I'm using this blade to cut down your silly little tree!" Wufei almost yelled, his anger fueled by pride, "This dao is a traditional fighting sword from my home! And I will not disrespect its past by using it for such a demeaning task!"

Duo sighed and shook his head. "Alright, then fine." Duo said calmly and Wufei relaxed slightly, glad that Duo was being so understanding. Then Duo held out his hand towards Wufei and said, "Then give it to me and I'll do it."

Once again Wufei's eyes widened at Duo's audacity. "Not a chance are you touching this sword Maxwell." He growled, sending Duo a glare that almost melted the snow from shear will power.

"Why not?" Duo said, "If I do it, your sword's heritage wont be undermined, because I don't know about it's heritage. As they say 'Ignorance is bliss'." He then smiled up at Wufei with his hand still stretched out. He really didn't understand what the big deal was. He just wanted to chop down the tree.

"That logic doesn't even make sense Maxwell and you know it." Wufei growled. How could one American be so insolent?!

To try and stop the argument, Trowa stepped up to the tree and placing his foot at the base, pulled the tree towards him. With a loud snap the tree broke away from it's roots and came free in Trowa's hand. Both Duo and Wufei stopped arguing to look over at Trowa.

Duo's face split into a wide grin and he shouted, "Woo! Nice going Tro'!"

Wufei just huffed and started to trace his footsteps back to the main path they had been on, glad that they were about to get out of the cold. All he planned to do when he got home was curl up in the chair closest to the fire place and finish his book and if anyone interrupted his plan they would be shot on the spot, no questions asked.

Heero glared over at Duo and growled, "Did that really require _all_ of us?" He really didn't like being here. He was freezing. Heero was only wearing a long pair of pants he had borrowed from Duo and a thin jacket over a short-sleeve red top. He had never been required to go somewhere with a cold climate so he had never really felt the need to purchase anything too warm and he was paying for it now (1). Not that you would catch him complaining. He had been trained better than that.

Duo just smiled over Heero while trying to figure out the best way to haul the tree back to the safe house. "Of course it did! I wouldn't want you all to miss this wonderful experience!" He said with a laugh before adding, "Plus, if I gave you a choice, no one would have came with me."

Heero just nodded. There really was no arguing with that. It was true. If he had been given a choice he would have stayed home, and there wasn't a doubt in his mind that the others would have done the same thing.

With a groan, Trowa heaved the small tree on to his back only to shove it off a few moments later. Pine needles are prickly and they are no fun when you have them resting on your back. Trowa stared down at the tree a few moments before deciding that the best solution would be to just drag it along behind him. With a nod of determination, Trowa picked up the trunk of the tree and started to drag it along behind him, walking towards the direction they had come from.

Duo trotted after him, followed by the others. "Keep up the good work Trowa!" Duo exclaimed happily, walking just off to the side of Trowa.

Trowa just looked down at the snow in front of his feet and kept telling himself it wasn't long before he reached the safe house. "I hope you aren't under the impression that I'm carrying this thing the whole way back Maxwell." Trowa stated.

Duo just laughed and clapped Trowa on the shoulder. "Wouldn't dream of it Tro'." Duo said before trotting ahead to lead the way home.

Quatre sped up slightly so that he took Duo's spot walking next to Trowa. "I'll take it once you don't feel like pulling it anymore." Quatre offered, giving Trowa a sympathetic smile.

"It's fine. If anyone is taking this after me, it's going to be Duo. If he wanted this tree so bad he can have it." Trowa stated, shooting a spiteful look at the back of Duo's head.

Quatre just laughed and then walked next to Trowa in companionable silence.

About two hours later, after Duo being forced at gun point to carry the tree most of the way by Trowa, the group finally made it back to the safe house.

"Finally!" Duo shouted, dropping the tree in the center of the living room and collapsing on the couch. "I'm exhausted!"

"You lost all complaining rights after you got us lost the third time Maxwell." Wufei growled taking up the spot in the chair closest to the fireplace. Wufei glanced longingly over at the book that rested on the side table next to the couch. For him to get the book it would require him to actually get out of his chair and that was defiantly more work than he felt like doing. The only thing he had had the energy to accomplish after entering the house was placing his dao in its holder and that was only because tradition had required it of him. Plus, he was probably too tired to read.

Duo was too tired to argue and merely buried his face in the pillow.

Quatre looked down at the tree and winced. It was right on the carpet and shedding all over the place. It was as if each individual pine needle that touched the floor was mocking him. Quatre groaned and plopped down in a chair. It was Duo's tree, let him clean up the mess.

Duo groaned and forced himself off the couch. "Alright, here comes the fun part." Duo announced to the other pilots.

Both Heero and Wufei looked panic stricken. It seemed like every time they came to a 'fun part' at least one of them ended up unconscious, their security was jeopardized, something got broken, or they got at least one obnoxious Christmas song stuck in their head. In other words, they didn't like the fun part.

Trowa just figured it couldn't get any worse and decided to stick around. Personally, he didn't think it could be any worse than all the things that had already happened.

Quatre just looked excited. He seemed to completely trust Duo's judgment despite his bad track record.

"Alright, I'm giving each of you a job!" Duo said in a general like manor, "And I expect each of you to perform them to the best of your abilities." Heero relaxed slightly. This seemed like something he was capable of doing.

Duo turned to Quatre and pointed. "Quatre," Duo said, causing Quatre to sit up straighter and give Duo his full attention, "You are on threading duty with Trowa. It is your responsibility to take the popcorn I bought yesterday and thread it onto some string that can be found under the kitchen sink. You can also find the necessary needle next to the thread."

It took all Quatre's will power not to salute. He was also mildly surprised that Duo actually had bought something other than Eggnog yesterday. Determined to do his job correctly, Quatre got out of his seat and followed Trowa into the kitchen.

Duo then turned to Wufei. "It is your job to turn this house upside down for anything shiny. Anything at all. No matter what room it is in."

Wufei cast Duo a confused look but decided it was best not to ask questions. He slowly got to his feet and walked off to complete his task as quickly as possible.

Finally, Duo turned his attention to Heero who was standing at attention and then instructed, "It your task to help me get this tree standing."

Heero nodded and walked towards Duo to help him heave the tree upright. Both the pilots got on opposite sides of the tree and pushed till it was standing straight up. They both held it like that before Duo seemed to realize that it probably wasn't going to stay standing on its own.

"Now how are we going to do this?" Duo murmured to no one in particular. After a few seconds of thought, Duo seemed to come to a conclusion. "**Duct Tape!**" Duo shouted and then looked around the tree towards Heero, who was still holding the tree obediently. "Be right back Heero!" Duo told him and then let go of his side of the tree to race into the kitchen and then coming back out holding the afore mentioned item.

Heero raised an eyebrow but chose to say nothing. Who knew. Maybe the crazy American actually knew what he was doing.

Duo kneeled at the base of the tree and began wrapping duct tape around the base and then connecting to the floor. Heero just watched curiously as Duo kept adding more tape and test how stable the tree. Each test came back negative as the duct tape just didn't seem to want to remain stuck to the floor.

Now determined to put the rebellious duct tape in its place Duo just decided to try adding more. It wasn't until two whole rolls of duct tape, and one pack of nails, were used up that the tree finally stood up right on its own.

Duo looked at his handiwork proudly and Heero finally stepped back from the tree, pulling splinters out of his palm. "All done." Duo stated proudly and rose to his feet, brushing his hands off on his pants.

"Now what?" Heero asked placidly.

Duo turned his head to look over at Heero. "Now I go see if the others are almost finished and you hang out here in the living room." Duo informed him before walking towards the kitchen, deciding to check on Quatre and Trowa first. "And once Wufei comes out with the shiny stuff start putting them on the tree." Duo called over his shoulder to Heero.

The moment Duo entered the kitchen he knew that the plague of the Christmas retardness had struck again. The first thing he noticed was Quatre sitting at the kitchen table and trying to pound a needle through an unpopped popcorn kernel and Trowa trying to figure out a way to keep the very few popcorn kernels that they had managed to string from falling off. Duo just sighed and shook his head. He just supposed it served him right for not being more specific.

When Duo entered the room, Quatre paused what he was doing and looked up to give Duo a desperate look.

"Um, Quat," Duo said, trying to hold back his laughter, "You're supposed to pop them first."

Quatre looked down at the kernel sitting on the table in front of him and a slight frown formed on his face. "Oh." Quatre muttered, "I suppose that would make sense." With a sigh that all that work had been for nothing, Quatre gathered up all the kernels that he had already put on the string, then the open bag of popcorn and threw them all in the trash can.

Trowa looked extremely frustrated. He _just_ figured out how to tie a knot big enough to keep the kernels from falling off the thread. Plus, this task seemed completely pointless.

Duo walked over to the pantry and pulled out an unopened bag of popcorn and then popped it in the microwave to cook. Smiling in satisfaction as he heard the kernels start popping, Duo turned to give Quatre a smile of encouragement. Quatre smiled back weakly. The only bright side to this he could find was that it would go faster now that Duo had corrected them and they wouldn't have to spend another thirty minutes tying a knot big enough for the holes.

Once Duo brought the popcorn out of the microwave, he sat down at the table both Quatre and Trowa were at. "Alright, firsts things first." Duo instructed, opening the popcorn bag and taking out one the pieces of popcorn and then lifting up the threaded needle, which was now dull from being forced through so many kernels. "What you do is you push the needle through the center of the popcorn and then you push it down to the end of the thread." Duo said, performing each step as he came to them.

Having gained some confidence, Quatre nodded in understanding as Duo finished explaining the process and then took the needle from Duo and performed the task as instructed. Duo nodded in satisfaction as Quatre completed each step perfectly and then told Trowa to be the one to push the pieces of popcorn down the thread so the process would go faster.

Confident that Quatre and Trowa knew what they were doing, Duo stood up and decided to go see Wufei's progress. Duo just sent a silent prayer to what ever god was listening that Wufei had done a better job than Quatre and Trowa.

Duo walked out into the living room to find Heero already putting up the 'ornaments'.

It was right then that Duo finally had his suspicions that there was only a God of Death confirmed because the prayer that Duo had sent obviously hadn't done a thing. Either that or this was just how the gods got their chuckles.

Out in the main room Duo saw Heero organizing the shiny objects on the tree symmetrically, in order of size and color. And Wufei had obviously taken Duo's instructions a bit too literally. Arranged on the tree was Heero's laptop, some necklaces, ammo, guns, a sword, a metallic shirt that Duo owned, a light bulb, and wide variety of other objects. It looked like the Christmas tree from a extremely well organized Hell.

Duo groaned and gave the tree another good look. "You weren't supposed to organize them Heero!" Duo exclaimed.

Heero turned his head to give Duo a confused look. "How else would I do it?" He asked, not really understanding Duo's complaint.

"At random!" Duo shouted in aggravation.

"Why would I do that?" Heero asked, becoming even more confused.

"Because that's how it's supposed to be." Duo whined, giving the tree a sad look. He could defiantly kiss his theme song good bye for Christmas. Even if Santa had decided to give him something other than coal that year, Duo was certain that he would immediately change his mind once he saw the sorry state of the Christmas tree.

Heero just turned his attention back to his organizing and stated, "Well that doesn't make any sense." Heero decided that Duo had probably caught hypothermia during their hike and just didn't understand what he was saying at the time. Probably best just ignore what ever Duo said, Heero concluded, giving his full attention to straightening the rows of objects nestled between branches.

Duo just sighed and realized that trying to convince Heero organization was a bad thing would probably be about as successful as trying to convince Heero that he was a piece of toast. Instead, Duo sat down on the couch and stared at the tree. He did have to admit, it did do a good job conveying all the personalities in the house. Each pilot was represented on the tree in some form or fashion. Heero had his laptop and some guns. Duo had his shirt, a cross, and a button. Trowa had ammo, throwing knives, and a sequined mask. Quatre had a little metal camel, an ornate spoon, a belt buckle and an Arabian coin. Then Wufei had his reading glasses and a sword.

A couple seconds after Duo finally accepted the tree, Quatre and Trowa came out of the kitchen holding a long line of popcorn kernels, each perfectly placed on the string. Quatre and Trowa both cast the tree a confused look, seeing that their stuff had been taken out of their rooms and placed in a tree.

Heero immediately took control of hanging the line of food, refusing to let anyone mess with the organization of _his _tree. Duo protested momentarily but in the end surrendered to Heero's authority.

The line of popcorn was hung in a fashion similar to that of the objects. The popcorn was wound around the tree, perfectly inbetween each line of objects.

Once the task was completed, all the pilots stood back to marvel at the fruit of their labor. None of them but Duo really understood why they had objects crammed into the tree or why they had to waste perfectly good food, but they were thankful that the task was done.

Duo sighed and looked up again at the tree. It definitely wasn't anything like what had happened with the big-headed kid and his Christian based morals, but then again, none of the pilots had abnormally large heads (Unless you counted Trowa but that was really just hair) and none of the characters in that show probably ever killed anything or made stuff explode just for kicks, so Duo just figured that there were bound to be some differences in the stories. Plus, if their story had Christian based morals or big headed kids with even bigger dreams it probably wouldn't turn out as interesting.

Who really cared about the true meaning of Christmas now days anways?

(1) Yes, I know that Heero did go somewhere cold...but when this was written, I kinda'...forgot...so just pretend this happened before that or something. Sorry for the misunderstading.

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_And now a word from our sponsor..._

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I would like to take this time to thank **Mandy5 **who **rocks out loud**. I give her complete credit for this chapter and it was all thanks to her amazing idea that this chapter was brought into being. The moment she gave me this idea I couldn't wait to do it. Hope you liked it! 

Next I would like to thank all the people who have read this. I got 1000 people to read this! That's a really big number! To think 1000 people actually used time where they could have been doing something productive to read my little story.

I would also like to add a note that I had to do a lot of research to find out the type of sword Wufei has. A LOT! Despite what some authors would have me believe, I knew it wasn't a katana. He does NOT use a katana. He may own a katana but that isn't his fighting sword. It's a **dao**! I swear it is. Don't believe me? Look at the anime/manga and find one mention of Wufei using a katana. Or any other sword for that matter. I dare you. Prove me wrong. Wufei's sword is not consistently straight. Wufei's sword tapers and it curves. Plus, katanas are JAPANESE! Jeeze.

It also can't be jian. Though he may very well have one. Jians aren't curved.

Sorry. That rant had to be gotten over with. You would not believe how many times I've had to hold that rant in while reading some story where Wufei's lover drools over him while he practices with a katana(s).

Oh and one last note. I'm sorry I'm taking so long. Like I said: Writer's block is a bitch. Plus, I'm a lazy little git. But you know comments might motivate me to work faster. (hint hint) Yeah. I know. I'm attention monger.

**Please comment and give me ideas. Writer's block is getting me behind schedule.**


	7. Seven Pieces of Coal

**Disclaimer:**I do not own Gundam Wing. And anyone who thinks I do has obviously been drinking too much of 'Upscale British' Quatre's tea (long story, don't ask).

**Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you. But this is probably my most favorite of all story arches. I just can't wait for chapter 12! It's gonna' be so great. I am really tempted to skip all chapters in front of it and just go straight to it. But if I did that it would completely ruin the ending and the ending wouldn't make sense anymore. Not that it makes sense now.

Oh and another thing. I am NOT on drugs. Thank you.

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Minor mild language. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

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_'On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me_

_Seven pieces of coal.'_

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Duo lay on his back under a small bed, biting his knuckle to keep from chuckling. He concentrated on quieting his breathing so that he was as silent as humanly possible. He was on a mission of the utmost importance and he most certainly could not afford to get caught. If he was found now, especially in the suspicious looking place that he was, he was definitely going to be in big trouble. It was a risky and life-threatening job, but someone had to do it. And it might as well be him, not that he wasn't enjoying it of course.

He had been laying in the dark on the hard wooden floor for three hours and it was starting to get a little boring. It seemed as if no one had ever cleaned under the bed and he was getting lint in his hair, and not to mention, the fact that his back was starting to ache from staying still so long. Despite all this, Duo still couldn't help the wide grin that was firmly planted on his face. He had taken all the necessary precautions to make sure everything would go smoothly and so far nothing had messed up. It had taken a lot of work to get as far as he had gotten so far but in the end it would be completely worth it.

His back and legs had cramped up about an hour ago but he knew that at any moment that his target could enter the room, and he couldn't chance that person hearing him and giving away his presence in the room.

Duo stopped his mental snickering as he heard someone enter the pitch black room. He held his breath as the footsteps drew closer to where he lay silently on the floor. Duo's whole consciousness narrowed to focus on the quiet sounds of the other person in the room that was slowly drawing closer to Duo's hiding spot.

Duo moved his head slightly and saw that the pair of feet were now directly in front of him, standing at the edge of the bed. He smirked and shot out his hand, grabbing on to the ankle that was closest to him.

"DANGER!" Duo shouted as soon as he felt his hand touch the skin of the leg that he had aimed for. Duo heard a loud cry of surprise and the person that he had grabbed jumped backwards, doing a back flip to land about three feet away. Duo then immediately drew back his hand as fast as he could, just in time to avoid a bulled that buried itself into the floor directly where Duo's hand had been mere moments before.

Duo burst into fits of laughter and managed to force out, "Don't shoot. Don't shoot." through his insane laughter. He was laughing so hard that tears sprang to his eyes and it became harder to breath through each of the bursts of laughter. Suddenly light flooded the room and when no more shots were fired, Duo rolled out from under the bed, still shaking from his uncontrollable laughter. Once he was out in the open, Duo managed to pull one of his eyes open to see a very shocked looking Trowa standing by the doorway and aiming a gun directly at his head.

Trowa looked at Duo in shock, which quickly melted into anger. He had thought that the OZ soldiers from before had given their location away before they had been 'dispatched', and that now he was getting attacked by their friends. But it didn't take long for Trowa to realize that it was just the braided pilot who had decided to hide out in his room. Though, he did have to admit that he was impressed at Duo's ability to stay silent when he wanted to. You would have never guessed by the constant stream of noise coming from Duo's mouth, that he would be so efficient at staying so silent. Trowa hadn't even suspected that there had been another person in the room.

Duo waved one of his hands at Trowa, trying to communicate his wish that Trowa put the gun away. "I'm sorry Tro'." Duo choked out, finally getting his laughter under control, "I couldn't help it."

Trowa just glared at him and Duo's eyes widened as he saw Trowa's finger get tighter on the trigger. Duo lept to the side just as another bullet whizzed past him to embed itself in the mattress of Trowa's bed.

"Hey! What was that for!?" Duo shouted at Trowa, no longer laughing. Duo glared over at the other pilot, who matched Duo's glare with one of his own.

"You should know exactly what that was for. And that was a warning shot." Trowa said, his voice sounding eerily calm due to the angry glare that it was attached to. "And next time you have the idea to sneak into my room, hide under my bed, and try to do something stupid, you had better_ 'help it'_."

Duo just chuckled and got to his feet and brushed the dust and lint off of his back. "Well of course I will. I'd never do the same thing twice." Duo said while smirking at Trowa, "That'd be a little repetitive, don't ya' think?"

Trowa just huffed and put away the gun. "Yeah, sure." He muttered and opened the door to his room, signaling that it was time for Duo to leave so that he could get some sleep.

The moment the door was open, Heero came charging into the room with his gun ready. His wild eyes scanned the room, pointing his gun into every corner. "Barton! What was all the yelling?" Heero barked, still looking for whatever had caused the disturbance. "Are Klaus's minions back?"

Duo snickered at Heero's question, but managed to muffle them when Trowa shot another glare in his direction. "Nothing is wrong Yuy." Trowa responded to Heero calmly. "The yelling was merely my surprise at finding Duo in my room," Trowa informed Heero, gesturing towards Duo, who was currently sitting on Trowa's bed, looking around Trowa's room with interest. "And no. It was not any of Klaus's minions." He finished, rubbing his temples lightly. Sleep was going to be impossible for him now. He could already feel the headache coming on. Trowa sighed mentally, wishing more than anything that he could return to the everyday dangers and surprises of the war and get away from his fellow gundam pilots. They were fine for short period encounters, but once you are forced to spend more than two hours with them, almost everything they did started to seem annoying.

With a curt nod, Heero walked out his door and into his own room. Duo sighed and got to his feet, walking to towards the door. On his way out Duo clapped Trowa on the shoulder and grinned up at him. "Sorry 'bout the scare Tro' but you gotta' admit that it was getting a bit quiet in here." Duo said in a friendly tone, as if Trowa hadn't just tried to bury a bullet in his skull moments before.

Trowa just huffed and said, "Out." The edge was gone from his voice, so Duo guessed that his comrade's original anger at his joke had at least subsided a bit. But then again it was kinda' hard to tell with any of the pilots other than Quatre, so Duo couldn't be completely certain. Duo just smiled up at Trowa one last time and exited the room.

The moment Duo had left Trowa's room, he was confronted with a pair of sky blue eyes, who were staring at him in confusion.

"Duo what happened?" Quatre asked him, a note of fear for his two fellow pilots in his voice, as he looked towards Duo for the answer to his question. Quatre was standing in the cold hallway, wearing only his boxers and despite the fact that it was probably only 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the house, didn't seem to be cold. He had just been drifting off to sleep when he had heard the gun shots and he had immediately grabbed his own gun from it usual place on his nightstand, then came rushing towards Trowa's room. Sadly, Quatre had found that he had to wait outside helplessly, due to the God-awful computerized locks that Heero had installed on all the doors. The locks were proving themselves to be more of a nuisance than a blessing. All the pilots were constantly being locked out of rooms because all the locks had different combinations and it was easy to forget one. Plus, Quatre had, in the past, found no need to memorize the code to Trowa's lock. So he had been forced to wait outside, going over every possible horrible, death scenario in his head while waiting for someone to open the door. He had even tried going to Heero, but his door had been closed and there was no way for Quatre to get inside, though thankfully Heero had come rushing out moments after Quatre had tried the door. Then a few seconds after Heero started to input the code into the lock's key pad, Trowa, to Quatre's relief, had opened the door himself.

Duo looked down at Quatre and smiled widely. "Oh, I was just joking around with Trowa." He stated happily, already walking past Quatre and heading towards the kitchen since he had found it necessary to skip dinner in order to take time to hack into the locks and get into Trowa's room while everyone else was eating.

Quatre trotted after Duo, looking over at him suspiciously. He couldn't tell if Duo was being serious or just kidding. He waited a few seconds for Duo to tell him what had really happened, but when the other pilot said nothing, he decided to question him further. "What do you mean?" Quatre asked Duo.

Duo's grin just got wider. "Oh you shoulda' seen it Quatre! It was great!" Duo said with a laugh, remembering how shocked Trowa had looked. "I skipped dinner, hacked into Trowa's room, hid under his bed and then scared the living day lights just as he was about to go to sleep."

Quatre couldn't help but to laugh at what Duo was telling him, despite the fact that he felt bad for Trowa. "So you weren't sick after all." Quatre stated, shaking his head in amazement that Duo had actually gone so far as to miss a meal in order to pull off his joke. "How did you scare him?" Quatre asked, a look of amusement in his eyes.

"I grabbed his ankle just as he was about to get into bed!" Duo said laughing at his own genius. Sometimes he even amazed himself.

Quatre laughed outright at this. He could already imagine the look on Trowa's face when he felt the hand grab his ankle. He had to admit that it was a cruel prank to play on a soldier in a war, but he also had to admit that he wished that he had the guts to do something like that himself. "Allah. He must have jumped out of skin!" Quatre said with another laugh.

"Yeah!" Duo responded, "It was so great! He leaped like halfway across the room! Oh man...I wish I had caught it on camera."

Quatre smiled at the idea. He had always wanted to buy a camera. Since any day could be the last, he thought that the idea of a camera to record each day he had seemed like a good idea. It had even seemed important enough that he had decided to include it on his the Christmas list that Duo had had him write a few days before. "But that's an easy way to get yourself killed." Quatre pointed out, trying to at least seem like he didn't completely approve of Duo's actions.

Duo smiled widely as they entered the kitchen and put his hands behind his head while walking over to the pantry. "Ah, yes. But I would have left this world with a smile on my face." Duo sighed happily. "Plus, I think Trowa has a little more self-control than to kill me without questioning me first." He then leaned over and grabbed a bag of cookies shaped like snowmen out of the pantry, which were another thing that he had bought in his Christmas euphoria.

Quatre looked off in thought as Duo popped another cookie into his mouth. "Hey Duo," Quatre said, still looking thoughtful, "Didn't you say that Santa was always watching?" Quatre asked.

"Yeah, so?" Duo said around a cookie, while trying to figure out what Quatre was getting at.

"Well, didn't you also say that you had to behave or else you would get coal?" Quatre mused, looking over at Duo for confirmation.

Duo swallowed and looked slightly fearful, glancing around the room as if he would see Santa Klaus looking back at him from the shadows. "Um, yeah. I guess I did say that." He murmured.

Quatre looked concerned as he saw the smile fall off of Duo's face. "So wouldn't that pertain to that little trick you pulled?" He continued.

Duo set down the cookies and took a deep breath. "Yeah, I guess it would. But there are a lot of worse things than just scaring someone a bit." Duo said with a wave of his hand, trying to blow the whole thing off as nothing.

Quatre laughed and nodded in agreement. "Yeah, you're right! If all the deaths we cause don't get us a mountain of coal then I don't think that a little prank will."

"Exactly! I am right! Plus, I'll just be extra good, and then Santa will be forced to not give me coal." Duo exclaimed, looking slightly relieved. He had gotten coal every single year. Every single 'effin year. Back at the church, Sister Mary would get up extra early on Christmas morning just so she could beat Duo to his gifts and exchange them with something other than an ugly rock to make sure that he wouldn't get disappointed. At first he had liked the gift of coal. In fact, he had even named it and it had become his pet 'Rocky' (yeah, original little tyke wasn't he?). He still had it. It normally sat on the floor of his gundam's cockpit, but he had brought it with him when he was sentenced into this house since he didn't want Rocky to be alone on their 'anniversary'. It was currently taking residence in Duo's left pocket, kinda' like a lucky charm or something. But after the first time of getting coal, it had gotten a little old. This year he was determined to get something other than coal, even if he had to steal it off the old windbag's sleigh himself! And even if he had to act like a good little boy for the rest of the days leading up to Christmas!

As Duo was thinking, he heard footsteps entering the kitchen. Since he was so lost in his thoughts, without thinking, he acted on his gundam pilot instincts, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the first blunt object he felt and then hurling it in the direction of the footsteps.

Quatre smiled over at Wufei who was walking into the kitchen for his routine cup of water that he got every single night, without fail, directly at midnight. Just as Quatre was raising his hand to greet his fellow pilot, he saw Duo throw something at Wufei. Wufei seemed to notice the object just as Quatre did, but it was already too late to move out of the way since the last thing he had been expecting when walking into the kitchen was to be assaulted by one of the other pilots. Quatre watched in complete horror as the object struck Wufei square in the center of the forehead, knocking him back to the floor, unconscious.

Duo seemed to realized exactly what he had done just a few seconds after the object was out of his hand, and he watched Wufei fall to the ground in what seemed like slow motion.

The moment Wufei dropped, both Duo and Quatre leaped towards him, in order to see if he was alright. "What in Allah's name did you do that for!?" Quatre almost shouted, still trying to be mindful of the other people in the house that were sleeping.

"I-I didn't mean to." Duo stuttered, watching as blood sprouted from a gash on Wufei's forehead. "I just wasn't thinking and then- footsteps – reflexs- It's not my fault!" Duo tried to explain, though his mind didn't seem to want to stay on one train of thought for then a few seconds. Duo's eyes then searched the ground for the object that he had thrown and noticed the small black object lying on the ground about a foot away from Wufei's head.

"Rocky!" Duo shouted, lunging for the object and scooping it up in one of his hands. "I'm sorry buddy." Duo told the small black rock with a smiley face painted on it. "I didn't mean to throw you like that."

_'Rocky?' _Quatre wondered as he stared at Duo with a slight mix of fear, confusion, and worry. He just guessed that 'Rocky' must be the name of the black rock that Duo was currently hugging. He couldn't really figure out why Duo was talking to the rock, but then again, Duo had done much stranger things in the past.

A groan on the floor brought Quatre's attention back to his injured comrade who seemed to be slowly coming back to the conscious world.

Wufei's eyes squeezed tightly together, as Wufei tried to pinpoint what part of him was hurting and thenn he slowly opened his eyes as he felt the initial wave of pain subside. Wufei glanced wearily around the room trying to take in his surroundings, while attempting to remember exactly what had happened that had landed him on the floor with a cut on his head.

The first thing Wufei noticed was a worried looking Quatre who was leaning over him and then Maxwell, who looked...to be cuddling a rock. Why didn't that surprise him at all? Wufei rolled his eyes and started to sit forward and raised a hand to head to feel the sticky blood that was already starting to dry.

"Are you alright Wufei?" Quatre asked him slowly.

"I'm fine Winner." He responded tensely, still not being able to remember how it had happened.

_'Wait. Maxwell had done this!' _Wufei's mind slowly registered.

Wufei's head snapped to the side so that he was able to send a glare at Duo. A murderous look come over Wufei's face as he guessed that that rock that Duo was cuddling with was probably the object that Duo had used to attack him with. Wufei let out a growl. "Maxwell, you have five seconds to explain yourself." Wufei hissed at Duo.

Duo's eyes widened and his gaze shot over to Wufei in fear. He mentally fumbled for an excuse that Wufei would buy, but came up short. With a mental shrug, Duo just decided to wing it and see where that got him. "Woah! Hey! This isn't my fault. I was trying to save you." Duo exclaimed, attempting to sound indignant. "You see, Rocky, he's got some anger issues, and I tried so hard to keep him at bay, but he's an animal I tell you! I just couldn't prevent him from attacking again!"

Wufei's glare intensified after Duo's explanation. "Why did 'Rocky' get impaled upon my skull Maxwell?" he ground out.

"Well hey, you're not the only victim here. Rocky got hit just as hard." Duo said, raising his nose and holding his precious pet rock closer.

"Maxwell." Wufei growled in warning.

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Right? So that means that your forehead hit Rocky back just as hard. For all I know, Rocky could have a severe concussion."

Wufei just lunged for Duo and shouted, "I'll show you and equal and opposite reaction!"

Duo yelped in surprise but had already predicted this outcome and dove off to the side and avoided the attack. "I didn't mean to!" Duo cried over his shoulder. "Really! I'm being good this year!"

"Yeah right!" Wufei shouted back. Throwing a punch at Duo's head but missing by about an inch when he ducked.

"I am!" Duo shouted back. He raced around their kitchen table and then jumped over the island. "I'm sorry Wufei!"

"Not going to work Maxwell!" Wufei growled while throwing another punch at Duo's head. "You'll be really sorry when I shove that rock down your throat, which you should have thought about before throwing the darn thing!"

Duo yelped as he narrowly avoided a kick to the torso. "You snuck up on me!" Duo shouted at him.

"I was walking through a doorway, Maxwell! In plain sight no less!" Wufei shot back, amazed that Duo actually seemed to think that he wasn't at fault.

"I said I was sorry!" Duo whined, ducking a punch that was aimed at his neck.

Quatre just sighed as the other two boys crashed around the kitchen. After the things that he had already been forced to deal with during his stay in this house, these sort of things just didn't phase him anymore. Instead, he got to his feet, brushing himself off and headed for his room. He would just let them sort things out between themselves, they would both probably calm down in a few minutes anyway.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Duo was using a frying pan to block a knife that Wufei was wielding. In normal houses, people just talk out their problems; here, they headed straight for the cutlery. Duo almost laughed at the situation.

Though there was one thing that he didn't find funny at all. Rocky was probably going to have another brother or sister come Christmas morning after that little stunt that he had pulled. He could almost kick himself for not thinking before he threw the rock. _'Oh well' _Duo thought. He would just have to be on his extra best behavior in order to make up for it.

* * *

_And now a word from our sponsor..._

* * *

I'm sooooo sorry that this took so long. Though I'm a bit curious as to whether or not anyone actually noticed that I was missing. In fact, I'll bet there was a party. But anyway, I have an excuse for not creating another chapter until today. I just go so distracted, loss of motivation, my Christmas spirit seemed to whither after New Years and was entirely gone by Valentines. But then when I **finally **got the perfect idea for the next two chapters, I completely lost it. I got so mad. You see, what happened was I got an idea right before going to bed. You know how sometimes you'll just get a flash of genius right before you're about to go sleep? One of those. But anyway, I was so tired I really didn't feel like getting out of my nice warm bed to do something about my genius idea and I thought I would remember it in the morning. WRONG! I couldn't remember a thing when I woke up the next morning. Not a thing. The only thing that I managed to remember is that I had a brilliant idea and it would last for two chapters and that I had loved it. Just enough information to make me miss the idea but not enough to remind me of what it is. I screamed, I yelled, I cursed, I re-read all my previous chapters, I read Christmasy stuff, I listened to a full CD of Christmas music 3 times, I ate pancakes (which may not sound productive but it has symbolic value...and I was hungry), I went over every topic I had been thinking about before going to sleep and yet I still wasn't able to remember what the idea was. All I remember is that it had something to do with:

-Duo reading

-Some song that I like but can't remember which one

-Revenge on something about something

-Ice

-Something to do with a Harry Potter icon that I saw and now can't remember

-Quatre and Trowa played some major part

-The phrase "These aren't the droids you're looking for"

-Mistletoe, which wasn't intended to be used for _strictly _yaoi purposes

-Markers

-Something called 'Captain Disaster' (but I think I know what I was planning with that)

-A couple of randomly placed phrases that I can't remember

-And a blond woman in a too short female Santa costume

Which makes absolutely no sense when put together in a list like that. I'm starting to think that maybe I didn't really have an idea at all and that I was just thinking of some random stuff before going to sleep and woke up _thinking_ that I had had an idea.

ARG! But anyway, I'll stop gripping. I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter. As this story goes on it seems to be becoming less and less Christmas themed. I'm toying with the idea of just dropping this fic until next Christmas rolls around, but I'm not sure yet. I'll probably create one more chapter and then decide, depending on how things turn out until then.

Also, some of you may or may not noticed that I got rid of the Christmas lists. I did that because I want to have them at the end of the series so that they will make more sense. So just in case you are about to get mad at me for taking them down (as if any one really cares enough about that!), they are coming back.

I also changed the ending of Day Two because I wasn't satisfied with it. I'm still not happy with it though.


	8. Fillerness!

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing. And anyone who thinks I do has obviously been drinking too much of 'Upscale British' Quatre's tea (long story, don't ask).

**Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayham. Nevermind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fangirls have our moments thank you. And can you tell which stereotypes I used for this fic?

Oh and another thing. I am NOT on drugs. Thank you.

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

* * *

_Bow down to the fillerness._

* * *

**Gundam Christmas Lists**

**Heero**

Klaus:

You had better come no where near my home this year or I will be forced to kill you. If I catch you even trying to infiltrate my home one more time, it will be your last magical sleigh ride and Ms.Klaus will be a widow. So if I were you, I'd just skip my home this year. And also if you try _anything _like last year where you attempted to gag me and stuff me in a box to give to Relena, I'll make you wish I had killed you. I'll split you into so many peices that there will be enough to give to all the kids around the world in the place of presents.

-01

* * *

**Duo**

Dear Santa,

Yeah. Yeah. Let me guess what you got for me in that big 'ol bag of yours. Coal right? Just because I'm the God of Death and kill thousands of people doesn't mean you gotta' give me coal every single stupid year. It's almost like my job to kill people! You giving me coal for doing my almost job would be like Heero trying to kill you for sneaking into his house through the chimney. Plus, I'm killing for a good cause! So it's almost like anti-killing! _Anti!_ As you can see I've been the model citizen. So what if I dyed 'Fei's hair orange that one time? He needed a change of pace! Plus, you try being stuck in a safe house with that guy for two whole days and not need an outlet. The orange dye was just _begging_ to be put in his hair! I was doing the humane thing by letting the dye have its inner most desires fullfilled! I should get an award for understanding the needs of hair dyes. And it washed out! Also, if you count up all the good things I've done, they greatly out weigh the bad things. I've been fighting Oz! As a teenager! I could be going to high school and be meeting _normal _girls! And when OZ comes to the North Pole and decides to oppress you and the elves don't expect me and Deathscythe to come help. You're on your own there pal. I'd like to see how much your Christmas Spirit can help you in a gundam battle! It'll take more than Rudolph and his shiny nose to save _that_ Christmas. Ha! I win!

Duo Maxwell "Shinigami"

PS: If you _finally_ notice that I have been good this year, I would like my own theme song. And some Herbal Essence. It's kinda' hard to buy that stuff and still keep my dignity in tact.

* * *

**Trowa**

Santa,

I would appreciate the following:

-More hair gel and ammo. You'd be surprised how quickly I run out of both.

-X Ray vision so I can see through my hair.

Thank you. That will be all.

_Trowa Barton_

**

* * *

Quatre **

Dear Mr.Claus,

I must say that I am quite content this year. Thank you though. If you wish, you can always give my gifts to others who need them more than I do. But just in case you do decide to get me something or are unable to find someone else that would appreciate the gift(s) that you may or may not have already had your elves make me, I would like the following:

-World peace (If that isn't too much to ask)

-A puppy

-A camera

-Trowa

Sincerely, _Quatre R. Winner_

_PS:_ I left you water and apples just in case you are lactose intolerant. Hope you don't mind. Plus, they are better for you and will give you more energy for your world trip. And I must say I am a bit amazed by that, Sandrock almost can't make it around the world in one night _without_ all those stops that you make!

_PPS: _I also left you a gift under the tree. Just wanted to make sure you noticed that.

_PPPS: _Oh no. I just remembered that you are supposed to know everything that we do, so you probably already knew all about that last thing. I'm so sorry if I offended you in any way. I would completely understand if you gave me coal this year.

_PPPPS:_ Merry Christmas!

**

* * *

Wufei **

"Santa",

This a stupid ruse. I know it's you Hilde and/or Cathrine. I am amazed that all the others buy this and Duo even went so far as to not do anything that most would consider odd for the week up until Christmas. Do you really expect me to believe that some happy fat man that rides in a cart, pulled by a bunch of floating horses with horns, could ever possibly ride around the entire world and deliver presents to every house in one night, without anyone catching him? I am much smarter than that. Maxwell's stories shall not fool me. I know what is possible and what is not.

---Wufei

_P.S._: Just in case this is real, and Maxwell isn't just being an idiot, this is what I would like:

1)Justice

2)More loyal teammates who wont shoot at me just because I once wore an outfit that made me look like a part of the Hitler Youth.

3)Books

4)A cat. A black cat. Tom.

5)For Duo to stop making crude 'sword' jokes

**

* * *

Relena **

Dear Santa,

I have been a very good girl this year, and all I want for Christmas this year is for Heero to come back and kill me. Oh, and I also want Duo to get coal again (I'll pay you same amount as last year).

Love,

_Relena Peacecraft_

_

* * *

_

_And now a word from our sponser._

* * *

Back by not very popular demand...THE CHRISTMAS LISTS! Duh duh dun!...I know. I suck. And I'm having writer's block because I can't remember the idea I had! D:

I know it isn't very good but please comment. I thrive on attention. I'm an attention monger. It's what I do!


	9. Eight Million Dollars

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing. And anyone who thinks I do has obviously been drinking too much of 'Upscale British' Quatre's tea (long story, don't ask).

**Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you.

Oh and another thing. I am NOT on drugs. Thank you.

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

* * *

_'On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me_

_Eight million dollars.'_

* * *

Professor G sat in an office chair in the dark, sparsely furnished room, staring with rapt attention at one of the eight television sets set up on a single table along the wall of the room. The entire room was empty save for six chairs, a table and the eight televisions. The only light in the room came from the TVs' screens and each of them seemed to be showing a different room of the gundam pilots' current place of residence. 

The particular television that had caught Professor G's attention showed a very tired looking Duo collapsing on the couch in the living room of the safe house Professor G had sent him to.

Professor G chuckled at the tired pilot. It seemed that O's 005 had tired Duo out, he though in amusement. Their little experiment with the five pilots was turning out to be highly amusing, if he did say so himself. It seemed as if every day they came up with new ways to prove their true age to the Scientists, and G couldn't find it funnier.

Professor G then turned his attention to another screen which showed Master O's subject in his room, wrapping a bandage around his forehead. Professor G made a mental note to taunt O on how 002 had left a mark on 005 without even really trying. It was a proud day in his book.

Behind him, G could hear footsteps walking up to stand behind him and G sighed, peeling his eyes away from the television screens to look over and see Doctor J looking over his shoulder.

"How is our interesting little test progressing?" Doctor J asked with a coy smile, while his eyes immediately zeroed in on his subject to watch as Heero disassembled and cleaned out his gun in the safe house dining room.

Professor G chuckled and looked back at the screens. "Well, mine is adapting well. As expected." He said, with a boastful tone to his voice at how well 002 was doing in the test. "He has blended into his environment without trouble."

"Stop bragging G." Doctor J said in exasperation, while leaning down to look at the screens. "Plus, it seems as if he is causing more problems than he is helping."

Professor G huffed angrily and shrugged. "But at least mine is co-mingling and attempting to fit in."

Doctor J growled and snapped, "Just hand over the reports."

Professor G just laughed and picked up a manila folder that was sitting off to the side of the television in front of him and passed it to J, who immediately started flipping through the file, making noises of disapproval every so often. Finally, after a couple of moments, he snapped the file shut and tossed it onto the desk. "Hmph, it seems 004 is being the most productive." He commented unhappily.

"As expected, but I can assure you that it wont end that way." Professor J said, with a secretive smile on his face.

Doctor J raised an eyebrow and glanced over at G. "What do you mean by that?" He asked with interest.

Professor G chuckled and shrugged. "I'm just saying that 002 shows the most potential for progress in this small training exercise. After all, this is just to test how well they can adapt to living for prolonged periods of time with others."

It was right about this point that Instructor H entered the room with a coy smile on his face. "What? Are we talking about our little game in which my subject is winning?" He asked with a smile.

Doctor J laughed and turned his attention back to the television screen, which showed Wufei and Duo out in the living room where Duo was lounging on the couch, attempting to ignore Wufei, who was yelling down at him angrily about something. He then turned his eyes back to Instructor H and smiled. "Why yes we are. We were just discussing who has the most potential to win this little test."

Instructor H just snorted and sat in one of the office chairs. "Why even bother discussing it. 004 has always been the best at identifying with others and is already ahead in this trial." He stated confidently.

"Oh? Are you so sure about that?" Professor G asked slyly. "If my memory is correct 002 has always been the best at blending into a crowd."

"But it takes more than 'blending in' to succeed at this." Instructor H shot back. "And overall, if anyone is the best in crowds it's -"

"003. After all, he did live for a while in a circus." Doctor S said, stepping into the room along with Master O to interrupt Instructor's statement.

Doctor J just chuckled and shock his head. "I don't think what 003 did hardly counted as fitting in." He commented.

"Ah, but it was a circus. You are never supposed to fit in there." Doctor S stated defensively.

Master O just laughed and looks down at S with a disdainful look. "Is that the best excuse you have? But anyway, on a more serious note, I believe you all to be wrong. 005 is the best suited in this situation because he knows how to remain true to his training even in times like this."

Doctor J glared up at O and snarled, "Are you trying to hint that mine can't do the same?"

Master O just waved off his comment and stated, "No, not at all. All I'm saying is that your's already had one slip up in the past and also mine knows how to remember his training and yet still remain balanced."

Professor G let out a bark of laughter. "Balanced? Pfft. 002 has all the balance he needs, whatever that means. But the fact of the matter is that my subject is going to come out on top of this test." He stated, confidently.

Instructor H looked over at G with an eyebrow raised. "Hm? Is that so?" He asked questioningly. "If you are so confident, what do you say to a small wager?"

"Like what?" Professor G asked with interest.

"Yes, you have me curious H. What is it that you mean?" Doctor J asked, leaning in further to hear better along with the other Scientists.

Instructor H chuckled and crosses his arms, leaning up against the desk. "What I mean, is that we have a bit of a bet on who's pilot will come out the best in this competition. At the end we will all vote on who did the best, except we won't be able to vote for our own."

Doctor S looked over at H with an interested look in his eyes. "And what shall the winner get?" He asked.

Instructor H looked thoughtful and tapped his chin. "I'd say eight million dollars is a fair bet."

Master O sniffed in contempt. "Mere pocket change."

Professor G looked over at O with an amused expression. "What's this O, afraid you'll lose?"

"I wouldn't count on it G." He shot back.

"Alright, then it's settled." Instructor H said, clapping his hands. "Whoever's pilot does the best aiding, blending into and performing in the set environment is the winner."

"Wait." Doctor S says, capturing all the other Scientists' attention. "Let's say we make it a bit more interesting?"

Doctor J looked over at S in confusion. "Interesting? What do you mean?"

"Like, make it a bit more than just stuck together in a house." He said, an idea forming in his head as he spoke.

"Alright, now you've caught my attention. How would we do that?" He pressed.

A wide smirk came over Doctor S's face as he continued, "By trapping them all in the same room with one another, with no food, no electricity and no heat, for a period of time to see how they react. To see who will keep calm and level headed."

Master O laughed outright at this. "I'm liking this idea of yours, because it is obvious that 005 will do the best, but I'm confused as to how you will do it." He stated, the other Scientists making noises of agreement.

If at all possible, the smirk on Doctor S's face became even wider. "Ah, it will be explained all in good time." He explained with a devious smile on his face.

Professor G laughed and rolled his chair over to a computer off to the side of the room and began to type furiously on the keyboard.

Doctor J laughed at S's explination. "But we shall bring them _closer_ together in this wonderful time of Christmas."

All the other Scientists nodded with large smiles on their faces. Each of them already planning how they would spend their eight million dollars come Christmas Day.

* * *

_And now a word from our sponsor..._

* * *

I'M BACK! 

Yes that's right, I've finally returned from my prolonged vacation on this story. I got my Christmas spirit back with avengance. I've already started on the next three chapters!

This one took a bit longer than expected because I just couldn't figure out which Scientist went with which pilot and it held me up a bit, but I finally got it. Also, I would like to extend an appology to the Gundam Wing community in general because I could not for the life of me remember what the Scientists's personalities were. So I winged it and gave them personalities like their corosponding pilots. Yes. I know. I fail at life. But you must forgive me because this chapter plays a serious role in the next day, which is going to be **freaking awesome**!

And incase you didn't know: Doctor J - Heero, Professor G - Duo, Doctor S - Trowa, Instructor H - Quatre, and Master O - Wufei.

Oh, And I'm sorry for how short this one is. I just didn't want to make it any longer because that would make it seem drawn out and icky. But I promise the next one will be longer!

But I'd like to thank all of you for putting up with me and actually reading my eye cancer inducing jumble of words. Love ya'! And merry late Christmas!


	10. Nine Russian Soap Operas

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing.

**Author's Notes:** My friend and I got to talking and we wondered what the pilots Christmas letters to Santa would look like and then VIOLA! This was born from the mayhem. Never mind the fact that they all probably don't believe in Santa. Let us fan girls have our moments, thank you..

**Warnings:** Major stupidity! Christmas cheer. Author probably drunk on eggnog but that's what makes things fun anyways.

* * *

_'On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me_

_Nine Russian soap operas.'_

* * *

Heero sat calmly on the living room couch, typing away on the laptop resting on his lap. It had been four days since he had reported to the Doctor and he had some serious work to do.

Across the room, Duo sat on the floor about a foot away from the T.V., flipping through the channels and Quatre sat on the chair closest to Duo. Every couple of seconds Duo would switch the channel again, causing a serious annoyance to Heero. Not to mention that Duo had been repeating this process for the last _**two hours**_! And they only had like 40 channels! Heero couldn't understand why both Duo and Quatre seemed to be so fixated on a television that only showed weird soap operas in Russian.

Every second Heero would hear:

_Click._

_Babble babble._

_Collective groan from Duo and Quatre._

_Click._

_Russian chatter._

_Sigh._

_Click._

_Sound of a woman sobbing and some more Russian babble._

_Growl._

_Click._

For two freaking hours! Even with Heero's focus and ability to tune out stuff, the background noise of Duo and Quatre was starting to get on his nerves.

Heero lifted his head as Trowa and Wufei entered the room, debating about something or another. Heero mentally shrugged and went back to his work since he couldn't hear what they were saying anyway over the noise of the television.

As Wufei entered the room, he carefully took in the scene in front of him, trying to make some sense of it. In the end he merely reached the conclusion that Duo's peculiar habits were contagious and Quatre had caught it, so now they both had an odd goal to watch all the Russian soap operas on their T.V. at the same time, and Wufei couldn't be certain if they were failing or succeeding. Judging by the discontented sounds coming from the pair, he did venture a guess that they were losing.

Wufei looked over at Trowa with a confused look on his face, as if to ask Trowa if he knew what was going on. Trowa simply shrugged in response and went to calmly sit down on the small sofa across from where Quatre sat to watch as Duo flipped through the channels.

Wufei paced over to stand behind Duo and look down at the television. "Whatever you're looking for, if you haven't found it yet, it probably isn't there." Wufei stated mildly, not looking away from the television screen, which was currently showing a voluptuous woman crying and clinging to the leg of a dark, handsome man, who was shouting something down at the girl in Russian. Wufei didn't even want to bother to mention that the shows only changed once every half hour, so flipping through them constantly was basically pointless.

Duo sighed and rolled his eyes. Without turning around to look at Wufei, he responded, "Yes, I realize that, but I'm going to keep trying to look anywa-"

"Oooh! Duo! Is that it!?" Quatre shouted, interrupting Duo. He had jumped up from his seat and was pointing to the television with a wide, hopeful grin on his face.

A wide smile broke across Duo's face and he suppressed the urge to start dancing around the room out of pure relief and the urge to shout, "See! I know what I'm doing!" in Wufei's face. He looked over at Quatre and smiled even wider. "Yep, that's exactly what we're looking for."

Both Heero and Trowa looked over at the television to see what Quatre and Duo were getting so excited about. On the screen it showed the opening credits to some show and a chubby snowman trudging around in snow. The only word of the credits that weren't in Russian was the word 'Rudolph', which might as well have been in Russian to Heero, Wufei and Trowa. Heero just shook his head and went back to typing. Honestly, he couldn't have cared less what Duo and Quatre watched, as long as Duo didn't start his insane channel surfing again.

Duo leaned back and smiled as the snowman started his little dance routine. He could still remember watching this movie at least 300 times back when he was younger. He had each line practically memorized.

Quatre sat back down and moved towards the end of his seat in order to see the screen better. Duo had spent the better part of the last two hours telling him how big a part the Christmas specials were to the holiday experience. And even if he couldn't understand what they were saying, he was looking forward to seeing the Rudolph movie. The movie looked extremely old. Judging by the movements and appearance of the snowman, who was still dancing around, the movie was made by just moving a figurine around a set and taking photos after each move until you had enough pictures to combine into making a moving scene. This movie was practically an antique, Quatre was surprised they even still showed it! Quatre looked over at Duo with a grin and said, "It looks as if it would be difficult to dance around for that poor snowman. I bet he wished he had legs."

Duo just laughed and swung a pillow at Quatre. "Sadly, we all know first hand why he doesn't and should never have legs. Better to be dancing around on a stubby, buttish-thing than to have two broken twigs for legs." Duo said laughing.

Wufei walked over to a couch and sat next to Heero, across from the T.V. and leaned forward as the snowman's song seemed as if it was coming to an end. There was nothing better to do, he had already read and finished all his books, but just watching the snowman, he could already feel his braincells dying the most slow and painful death imaginable, one by one. He sat silently on the couch listening as their cries of anguish almost drowned out the song. Just as Wufei accepted the fate of his poor, defenseless IQ, the snowman finally stopped singing and the mindless Christmas show...shut off.

Wufei sat there for a few seconds, trying to grasp what had just happened. Not only had the television shut off, but everything had shut off. The only light came from the dying fire in the fireplace, and in the darkness, Wufei could hear Duo shout, "Hey, what gives!?" and the sound of him pushing the power button of the television several times.

The five pilots sat in the darkness silently for a few seconds, with Duo still trying to push the power button, as if hitting it a couple dozen more times might magically yield a different result than the first dozen times. The silence was then broken by Heero, who growled, "Maxwell, what did you do?"

In the dim light of the fire, Duo turned to make a face at Heero. "I didn't do anything, but I'm missing the movie is what I'm doing right now." Duo cried.

"Probably just a short circuit." Quatre reasoned, trying to stop a fight before it started. He then got to his feet and started walking towards the door. "I'll go and check the fuse box." He stated before reaching the door.

It was just about the same time that Quatre finished his statement that he realized that there was a major wrench in his plan. He realized that he wouldn't be able to get to the fuse box just as he stretched out his arm towards the lock key pad. The _electronic _lock key pad. He stood there for a few seconds, just looking at the key pad as if any second, the screen on the pad would light up again as long as he just stood still long enough.

"Heero?" Quatre said meekly.

"Huh?

"Your locks are a fire hazard."

"Oh." was Heero's only reply as he remembered the locks he had installed to keep out the elves.

Quatre silently went back to his spot and sat down, leaning forward and resting his chin in his hands, feeling a sense of what could only be described as 'tranquil panic' creep over him. Unlike the last time he had been trapped in a room by Heero's locks, this time it was actually real and there was no on around to let them out.

Trowa sighed and leaned back in his seat, stretching out his legs. "So, do you think OZ is behind this?"

Heero shook his head. "No. I honestly don't. OZ would have screwed something up and made it obvious it was them."

The calm, almost numb feeling, in the room was suddenly broken by a growl of frustration from Duo. "I'm missing the movie all because of your stupid elf phobia Heero!" Duo shouted, pointing a finger in Heero's direction accusingly.

Wufei huffed and growled, "Don't you think we have more to worry about right now than that pointless movie of your's?"

Duo pulled his glare away from Heero and redirected it at Wufei instead. "I searched for that thing for two hours! I deserve to see more than the opening credits." He growled in aggravation.

Wufei rolled his eyes at Duo's priorities. "You're being childish Maxwell." Wufei sighed.

"No, **you're **being childish!" Duo shot back. He realized that that was quite possibly the single most stupid thing that had ever come out of his mouth, or anyone's mouth for that matter, but at that current moment in time, he really felt like being slightly less smart and difficult, it was just his way of venting. He was trapped in a small, cold room with four wacked-out killers, each of which should have been placed in a psychiatric facility for their multiple problems. Heero needed some help with his obsessive compulsiveness, not to mention the 'elf thing'. Quatre should probably ask a doctor about that whole 'no spine' thing, that probably wasn't healthy. Trowa, well actually Duo wasn't sure about him, maybe a new voice box because his old one didn't seem to be working, or maybe that was just Trowa's personality. And someone seriously needed to remove that stick from Wufei's ass.

Oh, and most importantly, Duo was missing his movie! In Duo's opinion, he deserved to let his genius IQ and maturity drop to that of a four year-old.

In all honesty, Wufei couldn't figure out how to reply to Duo's comment. He couldn't tell if Duo had been joking or if that had actually been his come back. To cover his confusion, he merely rolled his eyes and settled back into his chair.

Quatre looked between Duo and Wufei to make sure the argument was over. He then turned towards Heero and cleared his throat causing Heero to look up. "So, now what?" He asked.

Heero stared at the ground silently for a few moments before lifting his head to look over at Quatre. "Well, we try to figure out some sort of solution to our little dilemma." He responded solemnly.

The room was silent for a second while each of the five boys tried to think up a way to either get the power back on or how to get out of the house.

Finally, Duo broke the silence and asked, "Does anyone have something with a charge to it? Like your laptop Heero?"

Heero looked over at Duo. "Why? What would you use it for?" He asked, clutching his laptop tightly as if to protect it from whatever torture Duo was planning for it.

"To get a charge into the key pad long enough to get the door open." Duo responded.

Already the other three pilots were getting out their cellphones and other miscellaneous electronic devices.

"But there's a lock on every door Duo. Even if we could get enough of a charge into that lock, we wouldn't have nearly enough electricity to get through all the locks between here and the fuse box." Heero said.

"Ah, but you see, this is just a short circuit." Duo said with a sly grin. "That means that the power is only out in this room. So all we really have to do is get through this door and we're home free!"

"How're we going to get the power from any of the appliances into the key pad? And the power will have to supply energy to both the key pad and the lock, do you think that we'll have a sufficient supply to power them both?" Trowa asked from the couch, still staring down at his feet while thinking.

"Well maybe we can use some of the wires from some of the stuff and the rest is basically a leap of faith. We can't even be sure that it was just a short circuit or blown fuse. The entire house may be out of commission." Duo said with a shrug.

"So basically, you're plan is full of holes and guess work and may actually land us in an even worse situation than the one we're already in." Wufei commented mildly from his spot, with the regular anal retentive, I-know-best tone to his voice and body language.

"Well I don't see the oh-so-wise scholar coming up with any better ideas." Duo shot back defensively.

Wufei grinned and nodded towards the window. "We simply break through the window. And in case it isn't a short circuit, it would be a simple matter of climbing back in through the window to get back into the room." He explained smugly.

Duo rolled his eyes at Wufei's plan. "And what makes you think that you would be able to break the window?" He asked dryly.

Wufei flushed red in anger and glared darkly at Duo. "And what makes you think that I would be so weak that I would be unable to break something as fragile as glass?" He growled menacingly.

Duo chuckled and smirked, "Weellll, there is the fact that you're small, that Plato stuff that you read, and not to mention the fact that I could totally kick your Asian ass up into your shoulder blades if we ever fought." Duo commented casually with a sly grin. He started laughing as Wufei lept to his feet, growling threats in his native language, and giving Duo his I-wish-you-would-just-shrivel-up-and-die glare. Duo put up his hands defensively and grinned, "Kidding, kidding! But my point was that I didn't think that you could break the windows because they're reinforced. They wouldn't reinforce the doors and do nothing about the windows, that would just make the work they did on the doors pointless." Duo stated a bit more seriously.

Wufei just growled and sat back in his seat, deciding that starting a fight would be pointless, if not slightly redundant. He sat tight-lipped, sulking that his idea and part of his dignity had been shot down in one fell swoop.

"We could just call someone." Quatre suggested timidly.

Heero huffed and crossed his arms. "And call whom might I ask? We're thousands of miles away from anyone who could possibly help, and by the time they would get here, we would have starved to death."

Quatre frowned, realizing that Heero was right. He slouched low in his chair and looked around the room to see if anyone else had anymore ideas.

It went on like that for another hour. One of the five boys would suggest something and then someone else would debunk it.

By the end of the first five minutes, everyone was about to go insane. Both Duo and Quatre had skipped breakfast to channel surf, Trowa really needed to find a restroom, Heero was just incredibly bored, and Wufei was about to kill Duo just to shut him up about the stupid movie he was missing.

Duo sighed, leaning against the back of his seat and closed his eyes to shut out Wufei's most recent escape idea. They had used up all the plausible ideas within the first ten minutes and now any time one of them voiced a suggestion, it was mainly just because they felt obligated to do so. It was like their civic duty to tell everyone about their ideas in a crisis, no matter how stupid, illogical, or impossible they may be...even if that idea did happen to involve an albino snow man, a high intesity power drill, or holes in the space time continum.

Finally an awkward silence settled over the room, leaving each of the boys to their thoughts for a few moments. Quatre was thinking back to a book he had read about a year ago. It had been about a group of nine mountain climbers who had gotten trapped in a icy cave for a week. First, they had all acted nice to each other to try and keep spirits up. Then they had started arguing and blaming each other for what was happening. Then the hunger had set in and the stronger people of the group had overpowered and ate the weaker people. Quatre stared at the blank T.V. screen thinking of this. Well, since he had inside knowledge of how things were probably going to go down, he felt reasonably confident that he could be in that over powering half...now the only question was who was going to be the canibalistic food source...Heero and Wufei were not an option because they were probably high in MSG and that caused cancer. Duo wasn't an option because he was probably high in cholesterol and added chemicals. It would have to be Trowa, he concluded solemnly. It was sad but it would have to be done if worse came to worse.

"Well it seems the heat is out too." Trowa commented.

"Yeah. That means the whole house is out of power." Heero responded with a sigh of aggrivation.

"Maybe we should do something to pass the time. You know, to help us think better. I heard that if you can't think of any ideas for something just do something totally different and it will come to you. We should play "I Spy" or something." Duo commented from his spot on the floor.

"No!" Heero growled, "No "I Spy". Not after last time." He hissed with a shudder at the memory.

Duo frowned and muttered about how just because Heero couldn't play right, didn't mean it wasn't a good way to pass time. He was bored out of his frickin' mind. It was cold, he was hungry, and he was **still **missing his movie. Duo let out a sigh and started humming 'Up on the Rooftop'.

Heero's head snapped to the side and his glare zero'ed in on Duo. "Would you quit making so much noise! I'm trying to think of something." He growled angrily.

Duo stopped humming and looked over at Heero. "Well maybe I wouldn't need to make noise if you hadn't gotten us locked in this room in the first place." Duo commented.

"It was your stupid channel flipping that made the power go out Maxwell!" Heero said defensively.

Quatre, just tried to make himself seem as small as possible as the two argued. This was the second stage! They had already started blaming each other for what happened. Next came the hunger. Quatre almost whimpered but managed to stop himself in order to save what little masculinity he still had left.

In the background Quatre could hear Duo humming 'Up on the Rooftop' even louder, just to be difficult when suddenly the jackpot of ideas hit him smack in the face with the inspiration mallet. After getting the idea to stop swinging its mallet and to shut up and sit in the corner so he could tell everyone, Quatre cleared his throat loudly to get the others' attentions. Only Trowa and Wufei looked over at Quatre and Duo and Heero just kept arguing. Quatre growled under his breath and then sucked in a lung full of air and put two fingers in his mouth and blew, creating an extremely high pitched whistle which immediately caught the attention of both Duo and Heero. "Alright, now that you two are done," Quatre stated calmly, as both Duo and Heero sat down, surprised that Quatre had actually done anything to stop their bickering. "I think that I've thought up a way out of here."

This instantly got the other pilots up and listening. They all sat up straighter and leaned forward so that they could hear better. Noticing that he had all the other pilots attention, Quatre continued talking. "Duo, how was it you said that Santa got into houses?"

"Through the chim- Ohhhh, now I get where you're going with this!" Duo said with a laugh, surprised that no one else had thought of it yet.

"Exactly, no matter how well the safe house needs to be protected the chimney still needs to be left open so that the smoke can get out." Quatre said with a smile. "And we just need someone to climb up the chimney with a rope and tie it to the top so that the rest of us can climb the rope to get out."'

"I volunteer Wufei to be the one to climb the chimney!" Duo shouted out with a wide smile.

"You what Max-!?"

"Wufei it is!" Quatre said, clapping his hands together as if symbolically closing the matter, ignoring all protests from Wufei himself.

"What!" Wufei sputtered.

"Now let's just make a rope." Heero said, tying three blankets together.

Once all the blankets were tied together and Trowa had put out the last of the embers that might still be hot, Wufei was pushed towards the chimney. "Now do remember to be careful, but if you do fall we got some nice soft logs, ash and maybe some coals that you can land on." Duo said with a grin, finally pushing Wufei all the way to the fireplace.

Wufei just said a few choice curse words in both English and his Mandarin, before finally stepping into the fireplace, grabbing the sheets in one hand. His white clothes would be ruined after all this, Wufei thought bitterly to himself, pushing himself up into the dusty chimney. He pushed his back up against one wall of the chimney and pushed against the other wall with his feet, sliding up the chimney inch by incredibly small inch and Wufei grumbling the whole way up.

Suddenly a loud screeching noise exploded in Wufei's face and a small black object fluttered madly in his face. Wufei let out a yell of surprise and for an instant forgot to keep pushing against the walls causing him to fall back downwards towards the ground. Wufei managed to stop himself about ¼ of the way down by spreading his legs out and having a leg against each wall and also caught the sheets in his teeth. Wufei hung upside-down for a few seconds just catching his breath as the bat that he had just woken up flew out from the top of the chimney. Wufei cursed once one and got himself upright again, starting to once again climb the chimney.

About ten minutes later, which had seemed like the longest ten minutes of Wufei's life, Wufei finally reached the top of the chimney and pushed off the metal top which for some odd reason, had already been loosened, Wufei guessed this was probably how the OZ soldiers from before had gotten in.

Wufei tied the sheets around the base of the chimney and yelled down for the other pilots. One by one, each of the pilots climbed to the top, with Duo being the last one to emerge.

Duo looked around at all the other boys and almost collapsed from laughing so hard at each of the others. Each of them was covered in a thick layer of black ash, Wufei having the thickest layer and there were small spots of white from where ever something clean had touched their skin after they had emerged from the chimney.

All the others just rolled their eyes, each of them also trying to stifle their own laughter. They walked over to the ladder that Heero had left up from when he had been rigging the chimney with explosives (which he was now thankful had not worked).

"Come on Duo, let's get inside and get something to eat." Quatre called up the ladder to Duo who was still laughing up on the roof.

Finally Duo managed to gain control of his laughter, and walked over to a tree that hung over the roof and hopped onto its branch, and then down to the ground, with a light thud. "Coming Quat. You might want to check a mirror when we get inside by the way." He commented with a smile.

"Same to you." Quatre shot back.

They both walked to the front door where Heero was holding it open for them so that they wouldn't have to re-enter the key number. "It was just in that room." Heero commented with a slight smile. "And I call the shower in the third bathroom first." He then turned down the hallway with the bedrooms, towards the nice warm shower he already had running.

"Hey no fair! The locks were your fault anyway! I should get the first shower and you should spend that time dismantling those God-forsaken things!" Duo shouted after Heero, even though he realized that it was probably useless. "Oh well." he sighed with a shrug. Then Duo noticed that the power was back on in the living room and the T.V. was once again making noise. Duo cheered and raced into the living room.

Quatre followed curiously, arriving in the room just in time to see Duo dramatically fall to his knees, and shout, "Noo! It's not fair!"

Duo shook the television angrily as the ending credits for Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer rolled up the screen. Life wasn't fair, Duo concluded. And Lady Luck didn't love him anymore. Duo growled and just out of spite trudged into the bathroom right across from where Heero was taking his shower and began flushing the toilet a few good times until he could hear Heero yelp as the water changed from scolding hot to freezing cold rapidly each time Duo flushed the toilet.

"Maxwell!" Heero shouted from inside the other bathroom, hitting the wall once for good measure to get his point across. Duo just stuck his tongue out in the direction of Heero's bathroom and then marched into he living room where he grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen. He scribbled "Duo's Christmas List" in big bold letters at the top of the paper and then the word "coal" underneath it. He mumbled something about reverse psychology as he shoved his new revised Christmas list under the tree. Finally, he marched over to the couch where he plopped down in his usual spot and proceeded to sulk. It was Christmas time and Duo deemed it OK if this little episode was just his Christmas present to himself because every 16 year old boy deserved to be a bit childish every now and again. Duo knew he was being stupid and childish, but he missed his movie. In Duo's opinion, he deserved to let his IQ and maturity drop a bit.

* * *

_And now a word from our sponsors..._

* * *

OMG! I couldn't figure out how to start or end this one! All I had was that one paragraph where Quatre is thinking out who he would eat if he had to resort to canibalism. I wasted a lot of paper trying to start this one. It was really annoying, but then I finally got it going and it was like MIND EXPLOSION! I ended up getting all three of the final chapters written up! I just have to type them up and all done. Wow. I have never finished any one of my projects ever before. This will be my very first one. And did you know that 2500 people have read this! That is like a heck of a lot of people! And I actually got favorited! 9 times! Amazing! I couldn't believe it either.

But this was my longest chapter ever though I'm not exactly proud of it, but I don't dislike it either. I think I'm running out of funny (you know, regardless of the fact that I wasn't really funny in the first place). But the next chapter's my favorite! I already wrote it up and I absolutely love it.

Also, Mandarin is Wufei's language right?

EDIT: xD Ah! Man I really messed up that one sentence. Thank you so much to Kurotsuki Shie for pointing it out to me.

Please leave a review and I'll love you forever!


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